 Looks like you guys had a good time last night. Yeah You're clapping you had such a good time. That's always good to know So five years ago. I was on the floor of my parents house. I Was living in an apartment that I not only couldn't afford I had no idea why I was even there and you know, it had all started a year prior where I had a dream job I was a national journalist. I was married. I was in my early 20s. I had money I was independent. I had the start of a dream life. I had what I thought was my dream life I had gotten my master's. I was working in politics I had just been drafted as the talent for an on-air brand new television concept I thought my entire life was starting to finally make sense But after the start of that dream life a year later My marriage my then marriage was done. It was over. My job was gone all in the same month My independence everything that I thought was starting out so well was gone. I Had my dream job and my future dream job fall apart all in the same Month I had literally packed up my entire life in California and moved to Virginia Beach To start what I thought was gonna be my dream life. I had everything in these two suitcases And I was so poor that I couldn't even afford any other furniture in my house So my two suitcases turned into my dresser. And so I thought to myself as I was falling apart What had happened? Why is my job gone? Why is everything that meant so much to me gone? I did everything I was trained to do. I listened to the system. I took the test. I went to school I did everything everyone told me to do so I did Well, I did everything that I just knew to do. I started applying for jobs I was looking for opportunities and I thought that maybe I could have some sense of mission and purpose if I just Did what the system had always told me to do start applying for jobs The job that I had been training for that I had checked all the boxes for Didn't exist. It was after all the internships and all the conferences I went to and all the hands that I shaked and all of the Decisions that I had made all the sacrifices I had made to get this job now this job no longer wanted me Back and so I had to figure out what in the heck I was gonna do with my life again at 24 so What's insane is when your life? Doesn't have purpose and you wrap your entire life in a job You start to think about is there anything more? What else can I do? Because said I had followed the rules. I had gone to college I had done everything my parents told me to do that the guidance counselors told me to do and None of it was working and because I didn't have my dream job anymore. I didn't feel significant. I Had made the biggest mistake of my life without ever knowing it I had interested my purpose my direction even my own value and the hands of my boss and the hands of my parents and the hands of a system who was supposed to tell me what I was supposed to do With my life and the process and when it was all Supposed to happen Because no one ever told me that my value is directly tied to my purpose that I had the power to write my own paycheck To create my own system of values once I understood who I was and what I could offer to the world around me So truly the biggest mistake we were making at the time and in our early 20s was waiting for permission Waiting for permission from our parents from our professors from a system From media to give us the to give us the permission to go out and do what we were meant to do and Here we were broke starting over Not knowing what to do next Now my mentor in the midst of that brokenness my mentor ran a hundred million dollars speaking in live events company And I was talking to her and she's like Brian you just need to pursue your purpose I was like that was that was the worst advice because I'm here on the floor. I don't know what that means It sounds very fluffy sounds emotional. I'm not sure what to do with that But what's interesting is I begun the process to discover my purpose and what it meant to live it out I was then able to help others find their purpose and translate that into companies books and movements around the world So let me tell you what my purpose is I Discovered that my purpose was to help others discover and utilize their purpose to increase their income their influence their impact That has allowed me to live life on my terms and live the life that we love so much And it allowed me to determine my own value the marketplace five years ago told us told me that my life was only worth $46,000 a year. I closed a $46,000 deal yesterday Equivalent to my annual salary. Is it all about money? No money is the way we measure our impact in the economy It's the way that we keep score and measure progress How many of you have a hard decision that you have to make or raise your hand if you've made a hard decision in the last year or so Raise your hand. Who's in the midst of a tough decision? Maybe it was what college you were gonna go to maybe it was Who you're gonna got who you were going to enter into a business partnership with and if you didn't raise your hand You probably lie about other crap, too, so we'll be getting to you guys later Because all of us are in the middle of hard decisions decisions are hard. They're sometimes just crippling We call them decision fatigue We've seen as Millennials who study our generation and what motivates us that our generation is Stalled for growth because oftentimes we have so many decisions to make we don't make any decision Which by the way, no decision is still a Decision we don't know what to do and the reason that we don't know what to do the reason that decisions are so difficult Is because you don't know what your purpose is When you know what purpose is and when you understand it that every small decision every big decision everything that comes along you can either say Yes, that fits into it or no It doesn't becomes a filter by which you decide how you're going to engage and what you're going to do with it What do we mean by purpose? It's this big fluffy word that when you tell someone do something in your purpose You're like what the heck are you talking about? I have no idea even what that means What is purpose for us? We define purpose as what you have inside you to serve others I'm gonna say that again purpose is what you have inside you to serve others now up until this point You've never really known what purpose meant behind some you know beyond some fluffy emotional experience And it's not your fault that you don't know what purpose really means in the marketplace Because society talks about destiny they talk about your life matters or maybe five years ago You sat in front of a sunset and you got goosebumps and you felt significant, but you didn't know what to do with it Purpose has always been described so Really meaningless But purpose is less about feeling and emotions. It's more about doing The higher education system certainly fail this how many would you agree? How many how many agreed that the higher education system failed filled many of us Some of you are still in the middle of it. You don't realize how much it sucks I you know, I probably wouldn't nothing I probably wouldn't have gone the higher education system has failed us for sure It really taught us to ask permission to get the syllabus from the professor It was the it was the document with the the 12-point font Times New Roman one-inch margins turning in like this Don't ask any questions. Just do what we tell you we weren't taught to solve problems. We were taught to ask permission Most of our life We've been trained to check the boxes to go to a good school and then to go to a good college and then get a good job We've had this whole process laid out for us that we were supposed to do We were one of the first generations that it wasn't if you're going to college it's what college are you going to go to and whether you went to college that determines your value which for those Of us who graduated were on the other side of that, you know a few hundred thousand dollars in debt Realized that that value exchange wasn't exactly worth it We were taught how to study not how to solve not how to build not how to create not how to Experience life not how to experiment We were told to trust them the system our professors and to question everything else when in reality We should have been trusting our principles and questioning everything else Now it didn't have to be this way the system didn't have to be structured that way And I think that's why we see so many of the problems that we have in our society today But when you stop believing that a system defines your worth and start realizing that your purpose defines your worth That's when purpose is no longer a feeling an emotion or a moment. That's when purpose becomes life on your terms Now we're about to show you this process that we have developed having worked with Thousands of individuals around the world to help them find and better yet apply Their purpose and take that purpose and turn it into a career turn it into a job turn it into a nonprofit Turn it into a movement turn it into a family What we're about to show you is going to help you not only discover the importance of purpose in your own life But apply it in a way that makes sense for you now many of you I just want to warn you we'll never do this Many of you in fact only 1% of you will ever discover your purpose Only 0.01% of you will actually live it out to maximum fulfillment in your life Because it's going to take and require everything out of you the humiliation the mistakes the looking into the grocery cart I'm wondering whether you should take a few items out so you can afford the bill and not have an embarrassing moment at the counter It's going to require the moments that make you very uncomfortable and Some of us aren't ready for that kind of discomfort because once again as kids We were told you can be anything you want and do anything you want and that's all well and true But we forgot about the whole thing where sometimes problem Problems crop up in life and they slow down our plans and and things don't go as planned We've been as a generation Loaded up with all the potential of who we are and what we could do that we have what it takes to change the world But let me tell you my friends your potential is not your purpose Listen, you'll have plenty of opportunities to quit along the way You'll have plenty of opportunities to veer off whether it's when you graduate and get that degree Whether it's when you get married or have kids or when you're first or your second or maybe even your third Business fails. You'll have an opportunity to switch to change to maybe let it go Look around you There are people who are alongside you right now who you may be fighting the good fight Maybe you've you're in the same phase of life and you're running hard and you're starting businesses or starting movements And you're so excited and you're bonding with those people because of your experiences right now But the ones who push through are the ones who are going to be the ones who are remembered Because the people who are running alongside of you many of them most of them are going to slow down and eventually stop And there's a lot of excuses that we make along the way when we're trying to achieve our purpose in the marketplace when we're trying to Have a positive impact and one of those excuses is Brian Gabrielle, this is all kind of really extreme my life's going pretty well. I like it I don't want to rock the boat here. I'm going to college. I'm gonna get a good job And sure your life's probably going really well That's probably because you're young and you've yet to reach the age of regret and For many of those of you in the room who have the age, you know what I'm talking about, you know what regrets you have How many of you When you were in college or in school worked really hard to get a good grade like right in the first week The first couple of weeks you're like really really hard. I'm gonna read. I'm gonna read I'm gonna study and and then you realize took the first test. That's pretty easy I'm gonna she's gonna cool the jets. I'm gonna pull back a little bit get the a and I'm out of here That was your entire college experience that was a good investment It's human nature to seek The most amount of success for the least amount of effort possible And there's plenty of you that can half-ass your way through life and do okay But you will never feel fulfilled because you were never fully engaged Some of you have come up with this excuse that oh, I have time right? I'm still young or I'm not in that phase of my life or I'm past that phase of my life where it's too late for me as Millennials we've been taught this lie that 30 is the new 20 that we can kind of just figure it out take a gap year Go visit Thailand for Europe go find yourself on you know a Swiss Alps somewhere I don't do that that actually sounds like a parachute over the Swiss Alps Take a gap. You took a gap. I did do that actually that is actually absolutely accurate, but don't do that This generation our generation has been taught you know take your time have fun your 20s are all about fun Which is a complete and utter life 30 is not the new 20 or 20 should be your learning years in your 20s That's when you need to be discovering who you are what you can do and soaking in as much information as you possibly can I learned when I was 24 that I had bought all those Lies and I needed to decide really quickly how well I was going to read just and find out who I was so that the rest of my 20s which are closing in rather quickly Had to be about creating a niche for myself and creating value for other people because if not I was going to be regretting it that yet the rest of my life Let's get some perspective here two or three years of you Working your butt off to get to where you needed to be is nothing in comparison to the 60 or 70 that you'll be enjoying that Now there's another excuse that we throw out. I don't know where to start. I don't know enough. I don't have enough experience I haven't read enough books. I haven't studied enough. I can't get started yet. I need another degree I'm gonna stay for my masters. I'm gonna go on and get my PhD all worthy goals, but why are you doing it? Many many people that have done great Unreasonably successful things in life Did it without knowing what they were doing in the beginning When I worked at my first startup on the second day the CEO looked at me He's like I need a landing page with an opt-in and many of you in this room Probably know what a landing page in opt-in what is I didn't I had no idea five years ago What a landing page an opt-in was and he's and I said what is that? What is the landing page? What's an opt-in? He's like, I don't know figure it out But we got to send an email out to 250,000 people tomorrow and I need a landing page figure it out Let me know at five when it's done Okay So I figured it out and I figured out what a landing page was and I figured out what an opt-in was and the email went out successfully to 250,000 people You can't always know everything before you get started. I mean Gabrielle and I left our full-time jobs effectively at 25 Not knowing a darn thing Absolutely nothing. I remember that moment where I found it what my purpose was I was at a conference not unlike this and I was sitting in the back and I remember looking up on stage at speakers kind of like us Not as awesome or hilarious or potentially good-looking, but you know, they were speakers. They were okay And I was thinking I could do that. No, I said I should be doing that I had this idea in my mind that I want to become a professional speaker. I wanted to travel the world I wanted to write books. I had no idea how to do it guys I was the kid in history class that had a speech impediment who couldn't talk who was terrified of Saying anything out loud because I thought I was gonna look like an idiot Now I get paid to kind of look like an idiot and say things out loud But I had to overcome this idea that I had to have it all Figured out. I had to overcome this idea that I needed to have a plan in place just to make it all happen I've been able to speak around the world be paid to speak and to travel in places We've been to Croatia and Italy and Hawaii We just went to Machu Picchu in Peru all because I said yes, and I figured it out now in the midst of all these excuses if You remember one thing Commit and then figure it out. It doesn't matter if you don't know everything to get started You know school the system never taught us to go for it without knowing what's next The system taught us to have everything figured out all the steps. I got to have this I got to have my plan I've got to have this this has got to be in place this person and if and this one thing goes down I got to wait another six months. There's never a perfect time The system never taught us to make those kinds of decisions with that level of boldness We've kind of gotten addicted to crafting the perfect plan. It's never gonna happen a claim to World War 2 General George Patton said a good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed Next week today is better than tomorrow because tomorrow is full of excuses billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk Co-founded PayPal right payment processing platform Do you think that he had the necessary knowledge of jet propulsion to start SpaceX and go after Mars and the moon again? And to put civilians into just regular normal human space travel no way he said I'm going to do it I'll figure it out. Here's the deal either your dreams are so big that you run towards them Or they're so big that you run from them in fear We're going to share with you the four steps that are not only finding but applying your purpose Now how many of you came here to learn something new raise your hand See there are a lot less liars this time nicely done You came here to learn something be a part of something change your mindset and learn and grow That's why you're here on a Saturday morning is because you want to learn something So take out your notes take out your phone borrow your friend's phone I don't know and take notes repetition is the parent of mastery so many times you hear information And you never process it you never remember it you're gonna walk away and say Brian and Gabrielle were amazing Maybe the best speakers I've ever seen no my favorite response to a great speaking Humble that was interesting Get some takeaways you and I don't care if your head hurts this morning because you're out to take notes Do what you need to do to be able to remember because you're cute, but you're not brilliant So we want you to be taking these notes So we're gonna go through these four steps steps one to finding and applying your purpose is to find your passion Now let's be clear her passion is not your hobby. I have a lot of people say well Gabrielle I'm really passionate about craft brew craft beer making and brewery. Okay, but your beer tastes terrible. It's awful Your passion is not what you like to do on the weekends. You may be Excited about it. It may make you happy, but your passion isn't brunching with friends It has nothing to do with just hanging out and doing nothing Your passion has to do with what happens when you help other people your passion is not self focused Your passion must be others focused your passion is the one the one Injustice the one problem the one challenge in society that you want to see Solved change or remedy because you existed because you were in this world Some of you say well kept real. I can't just pick one. There's so many things. I'm passionate about right That's why many of you have a hard time picking a college track or even a college in general because there's so many things that you could Be doing Settle down miss America. I'm not asking you to go out there and create this whole world change world peace You need to be specific about your passion because when you're specific about your passion You're going to be able to apply it to your purpose and and have it feel incredibly fulfilling the rest of your life Your passion could be something like human trafficking or free and fair elections or curing a specific disease Passion is the frustration inside of you The injustice or even something that that that you're doing that you see someone else doing and you know you could do it better You know you could deliver the message better. You know you could deliver a better solution to the problem If you want to be up here, some of you you go to conferences you've been to many conferences You've said to yourself. I want to be an author. I want to be a speaker Let me tell you something if you have the capacity to dream it You have the capacity to do it if you can't achieve what you dream then what's the point in dreaming at all? What your life looks like here's what your life looks like when you're passionate? You can't sleep you wake up early in the morning unreasonably. So your friends and family think you're absolutely nuts They think you're a workaholic. They think you're you well really you're just pointing out all of their insecurities But that's that's a different story. They think you're totally hard. You're gonna have a heart attack No, all that energy all of that fire is Evidence of passion in your life, but I want to help you do something more than just think about passion I want you to think about how to discover your passion if you don't yet know it I want you to think about your most fulfilled day What were you doing who were you serving what were you creating with other people? Fulfillment like we said is tied to passion and passion has to be others focused I want you guys to do something. I want you to stand up if you want to start a company stand up right now stand up if you want to start a nonprofit or No, keep standing stand up if you want to start a nonprofit stand up If you want to have your own show one day or your own blog you want to influence people online Stand up if you want to write a book No, keep standing stand up if you've already written a book a little less people Stand up if you want to speak on stages like this Alright now I want you guys to turn to someone I'm gonna tell you the trick Hold on I'm gonna jump in I want to tell you the trick if you have those dreams and you're not standing up You don't have the boldness to go get it Do you are you gonna stand up and admit that you have a dream? Do you have a passion? Do you want to write a book? Do you want to speak start a company a non-profit if you can't stand the embarrassment factor of standing up to the person next to you You're probably not ready to go get it So stand and go and turn to someone else who's standing up and I want you to do okay to admit it now You can stand up. I I want you to look at them And I want you to ask them what they want to do and why they want to do it go ahead What do you want to do? Why do you want to do it? Don't mumble it out. All right, that's enough. You guys can sit down See what you just said Had everything to do with passion Many of you and you guys can go ahead and sit down. Thank you Many of you may have never even spoken it out loud many of you may be thinking that that's completely ridiculous How many of you I'm sorry how many of you spoke out your dream for the first time ever and it sounded Somebody's got to have the boldness to admit that this is the first time they spoke the dream out I want to write a book. I want to start a company. I want to start a nonprofit anybody in here There you go, that's bold right there. You spoke it out. That's the first step Don't stop doing that do it every single day write it down. Live it breathe it over and over Society makes those big dreams feel so strange like oh, who do I think I am that I could write a book? Or who do I think that I am could I could speak on stages or start a nonprofit? You see what Brian said was brilliant because it really is that dream that you have inside of you There's a reason that you have that dream and the person next to you does it the same dream that you had I'm sure wasn't the same dream or why it was the same dream of the person that you talked to you Don't belittle the dream that is inside of you There's a reason that you want to do it the path to get there may not be clear But that does not diminish the dream inside of you now step two to Identifying your purpose and implementing it in the marketplace is to identify your top skills and your top talents passion alone is not Purpose I'll say it again passion alone is not purpose Purpose requires your natural talent and your skills There are plenty of people who are very very passionate and very very terrible at what they do Just watch American Idol or America's Got Talent There's plenty of examples of people who are so passionate smiles ear to ear not talented because they're not in the right spot Now your natural talents are the things that come easy for you. They're the things that your parents That you that your friends would recognize come easy to you You don't need to think about them your learned skills However, are the ones that you develop through education or life experience Both are required to live out your purpose and inject them into your passion and you need to be specific about your skills There are plenty of people who we've gone through this process with and they're like I'm a really good communicator or you know I'm really good with technology if you're general about your skills. You're never gonna be specific about the application I'm sure there are plenty of you who are told by your parents that you could be a lawyer because you were a good arguer, right? You know, you you talked back all the time you always got your gut out of trouble when you were in trouble And they're like well you should be a lawyer. I wonder how many of you actually took your parents up on that Maybe just I did nobody else a hundred and forty thousand dollars of Law school debt treatment. Yeah, it seemed like a good. Yeah It always seems like a good idea at the time some of you may be told Well, you should be a teacher because you really like studying and reading or or teaching people We were speaking at a nurses conference just last week and we're talking to chief nursing Executives in the state of Virginia and we had this conversation We said why do you do what you do and working with people and mission oriented organizations? Whether that's nonprofits or philanthropic or justice organizations It's fascinating because so many work in these organizations and they've never thought about why they do what they do We asked one woman and she said well, it was either nursing or it was bookkeeping She said honestly, I chose nursing because it made a little bit more money That's insane you chose a 30-year track based off of just a little bit more money You decided where you were gonna live what you were gonna do the quality of life who your Relationships were where your kids were going to go to school if you could afford to send them to school All because you wanted a little bit more money in the short term Your title is not your purpose being a nurse isn't a purpose being a doctor isn't a purpose now being a doctor whose mother may be passed away of a Breast cancer who now dedicates himself to healing and helping women with breast cancer so no one has to experience what he had to experience That is a purpose Now here's where it gets good So earlier we talked about your passion and we just talked about your natural talents and your learned skills I want you to do this if you've never thought this deeply about your purpose before I want you to pick and think about right now your number one natural talent your number one learned Professional skill set and I want you to inject that into your passion like nobody's business Let's say you're passionate about free speech on campus because you were personally discriminated against like so many of us Take your natural ability in art and your learned skill set in graphic design and be the absolute best at it to create an artistic ad campaign To share the importance of free speech Let's say you're passionate about human trafficking because when you were younger you were sexually assaulted and you wanted to see it Stop you wanted to see that nobody went through it ever again Take your natural ability to persuade and your learned skill set in strategic planning and launch a non-profit and see to it That it never happens again Maybe you're passionate about financial freedom because yourself or your family experienced a bankruptcy and you knew what it was like The shame attached to it take that skill set that you have in technology and your ability to develop and design Design incredible beautiful things and create an app that teaches an entire generation about financial freedom and financial literacy Now sometimes it's more simple than you think if you want to make a lot of money Solve a lot of problems if you want to make a lot of money I would actually suggest solve one problem for a lot of people John Huntsman senior recently passed away and he got his start before he became a billionaire Recognizing that the American fast food industry was taking off and that people needed something to put their burgers in He created the Styrofoam clam shell that restaurants all over the world use To take food out of a restaurant except California. I think California Styrofoam probably banded you know and a lot of other things give it to California to do that or charge for it They charge extra for it, but John Huntsman senior later on had an amazing impact in the area of cancer research Because he personally experienced a touch with cancer and he built cancer hospitals as well Sometimes what you're looking to solve the injustice in the world the problem in the world is a lot smaller But it's for a lot of people Step three to finding and applying your purpose is to tell your story Your story is your competitive advantage. It's what no one can take away from you when we had to share your passion I'm sure part of it was founded in some sort of personal connection that you had to that moment You were personally passionate about something because something happened to you or something happened because of you now Your story is either a moment or a series of moments that changes the way that you see the world It's what makes you different from any other person who's going into the same industry or even the same job or the same Role it doesn't matter what degree that you got or what college that you went to you your stories What defines you it's what makes you different from every other comms major with a business degree Minor because you wanted to be more versatile in the marketplace. Wait a second. That's my minor. That's my bit That's my major. Didn't you study polysci in like religion? Well, you know, does that have an ROI? It got me on the stage No, okay. All right Look your story is the one thing that no one can take from you and that no one can copy It's your intellectual property. It's internal to you Your story is certainly that event or series of events that inspired your passion It gave you an early sense of your purpose even if you didn't first recognize it Gabrielle and I were recently working with a very large Grocery store retail chain and we were working with a team of HR professionals and we were doing a talk on this specifically We're talking about the power of stories and how the power of stories have the ability to create intimacy in the workplace in a good way to produce a productive result and a young man named Pete was telling the story of why he Originally decided to go into teaching and eventually take that teaching talent into corporate America and he said when I was in college I came back from class. I stepped into my apartment And my roommate had a gun barrel in his mouth And he said thankfully I had the courage to pull the gun out of his mouth He's still alive today and because of that moment I decided I wanted to help people be better to perform at their absolute best to help them live a better life Outside of just the core competencies of what they do at work every day. That story is unique to him Nobody can take it from him. It's his competitive advantage. It's the source of his fire and his passion I want to give you a hint Your story and the one that you need to tell the one that has the power to most inspire others Aren't the happy moments from your life. Those aren't the ones that usually define you It's the event or series of events the tough stuff It's the if this is a typical room over 50% of your parents went through a divorce and it changed you forever It might have been the sexual assault you experienced or if this is a typical room 20% of you experience child sexual abuse Maybe it's the addiction That you overcame Your story is one of the most powerful gifts that you have to inspire others when you pair it up with your passion and your skills Now we want all of you to stand up right now We're gonna do an activity to help you find out what your story is. So stand up. I know it's real early We're asking you to do a whole lot get ready We want you to experience this for yourself because it's one thing for you to look at us and say oh Well, that's really nice for you. We're gonna actually show you the power of story. So I want you to close your eyes Don't fall asleep on me. All right. I want you to take one big collective breath together. All right We breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. I Want you to think about the event the tragedy the moment in your life that tore you up Maybe the car accident that took a friend or a family member or Touch with death yourself or an addiction or whatever happened to you as a child I want you to think about where you were. I want you to close your eyes I want you to think about where you were when that thing happened or continued to happen I want you to think about how it made you feel Who did it to you? Whatever it is Pisses you off doesn't it for some of you it pisses you off For some of you it makes you tremendously bitter and angry if it was recent it probably brings tears to your eyes It's frustrating You live with it every day. You think about it every day Now I want you to think about in that moment. Why you're thankful that that thing happened to you Now that may seem crazy. Think about what I just said think about the most horrible thing that's happened to you Or the series of things that you had to go through to find out who you were as a person I want you to think about the reasons that you're thankful that happened to you Because bitterness just produces more bitterness But gratefulness, I'm glad that happened to me because it made me a better husband I'm glad that happened to me because it made me treat people better I'm glad that happened to me because it told me that I needed to turn my life towards solving human trafficking or Ending cancer in our lifetime Thankfulness produces success bitterness produces more bitterness and eventually more frustration That moment that happened to you that's defined you is the most powerful part of who you are It's what is going to make you work harder work longer go the extra mile Do what it needs what needs to be done to make sure that your purpose is actually accomplished It's the fire within you and society wants you to tamp that down or society wants to take that story and Use it against you to assign value to it rather than allowing you to assign value to itself You own your story. Don't let your story own you you can go ahead and sit down Now here's how you use a story for good your story The one you just thought about The overcomer story the thing that inspired you towards your passion or will inspire you towards your passion That's a gift to you to share with others It's the best thing you have to inspire others The most terrible thing in the world that happened to you is your gift to the world It was the hurdle that you had to overcome that allows you to help others It gave you the fire. It gave you the grit. It gave you the overcomer attitude to help others who are struggling in the very same circumstances The final step is defining value Now we're halfway there and if this is most talks on purpose or if you're reading a book on purpose right now Whether that's purpose driven life or something else all great books by all great authors But most discussions of purpose and destiny usually stop at feelings They usually stop at the point of discovery and there's never a question of okay now What do I do with this? How do I do it? I think back to the time when my mentor said follow your purpose. I'm like how How do I follow my purpose? I don't know what that means, right? Thank you for helping me determine that. I'm still depressed. Thank you. In fact, I'll tell you something mere awareness of purpose in your life without any action will make you more depressed and more miserable Does that make sense? Did that land for you guys? It will make you more depressed and more miserable because now you have an awareness of what you could have of what you could achieve of The heights you could go of the financial success you could have Just knowing it is not enough And that's the biggest frustration that we've seen and all the work that we've done on the subject of purpose Most resources don't go far enough Here's the truth now. You know what you're passionate about or at least you have a starting point You know what you bring to the table to your natural skills and your learned talents you also Now have to deliver on it with value. You have to create something that people want in the marketplace Here's an example of a purpose statement because of my life story I became passionate about this and I decided to take what I'm naturally good at and what I've learned in my life And I've created this thing of value for this many people It helps to get specific because if you're general with your purpose, you're slapping it in the face And this is the most important aspect of this process of finding applying your purposes all about value as Brian said It's agonizing knowing what you could do thinking about those big dreams seeing people who have the same idea as you making millions or even billions of dollars Or people who have the same thoughts as you or the same skill sets as you being on television and commenting on the things that you're like I could say that better or I could say that differently or my story is perfectly positioned me to do that That jealousy or that envy inside of you isn't that you that you think that you're somehow better than that other person It's that that burn inside of you because you know that that's what you're supposed to be doing Value is the most important aspect of finding and applying your purpose And it's something that's completely untouched in this space because if you don't know and you're not applying it Then you're not feeling truly fulfilled Value is what people exchange resources for it's everything from the money that people will pay you to the donations That you'll get to the opportunities that will open up to the reputation that someone will put on the line Because they believe in what it is that you're doing Plenty of you. I'm sure want to start nonprofits. You all stood up. You want to start companies? You may not know that over 700 nonprofits in the United States close their doors every single day Almost as many of those companies close their doors every single day And it's not because the people starting those nonprofits and starting those companies don't have passion They have tons of passion me you just talked to anybody who's got you know They're a little frozen yogurt stand or a coffee shop or a company that they just launched They have tons of passion. It may even be tied to their purpose But just having passion and knowing your purpose doesn't mean that you're actually living it out You have to create a system where someone will value what you do enough to exchange their own Resources for it and it's an easy question Your purpose will tell you what problem in the marketplace that you want to solve and you may even have the solution You may have the nonprofit solution the for-profit solution You may have what the marketplace doesn't yet have but you have to ask yourself Are there people ready willing and able to pay for it or support it? That is that is one of the most important questions in an economy that rewards great things in America I think so many times when we work with young entrepreneurs and young people they come to us and they say I have this great idea Right anyone seeing shark tank great show. This is my idea. This is my baby and it's all about them and their idea It's not about other people and the ones who are gonna actually be able to use it when you become others focus instead of me focused You start to have value driven in every part of your life If you want to start a company or start a nonprofit Make it about other people so that they want to have that exchange with you that they're willing to invest And you'll see yourself not only be successful. You'll see yourself be fulfilled So now that you've considered your passion considered your natural talents your learned skill sets and started to own your story and realize that it's the most Inspirational gift that you have for others. There are four steps to doing this successfully Success is life on your own terms You can write your own paycheck and change the world. That's possible especially in places like America Help enough people get what they want and you can get what you want This step to success is the most important one. It's the one that will set you apart Number one is be teachable Be teachable. You don't have to have it all figured out You don't have to pretend like you've got it all figured out surround yourself with smarter people ask smarter people than you Ask questions like crazy The funny thing is when you're teachable and you go out there to start a company you've got a great idea You want to start you want to write a book? People don't fault you for not knowing what you're doing right in fact most mentors most mentor-minded people Want to help those who are teachable and don't have it all together and that teachability It's also called humility so many people look at our generation. They have these ideas They stereotype us as being entitled or being being lazy or feeling like we know all the answers When in reality this generation is starving for mentorship and wisdom We may have access to the internet just because we have we have Google and Siri and Alexa to answer all of our questions We have information But that doesn't mean that we have wisdom that we have application the second step for success is to be gritty This is one of my favorites the grit factor that is ultimately what determines your success from being actually achieved To just being something that is dream the difference between dreamers and doers is the application of yourself To actually put yourself in a position where you don't have a choice. It's sink or swim You have to actually achieve it. You're gonna have to push past the relationships You're gonna have to push past the barriers that that have been placed on you Maybe by your family, maybe by your friends even maybe by yourself some of you are gonna have to move I'm a big believer in changing your physical location to change your mental location whether that's moving across the country or Going on a weak vacation by yourself so that you can finally think you need to remove yourself from a situation So that you can start thinking differently about who you are and where you're going There's something really true When it comes to discomfort If you are ever comfortable if you're in your comfort zone if you ever feel yourself getting into a comfort zone That's a problem Purpose is not comfortable Achieving purpose in the marketplace is anything but comfortable even with all the money and resources in the world Purpose is uncomfortable. It comes with risk. It's lonely It's lonely and if you're thinking about your future in the midst of achieving what you want to achieve and what you Want to dream and you're comfortable I want you to ask yourself have I started making excuses have I started giving up have I started taking an off ramp Have I started hanging out with the wrong people that don't inspire me that don't inspire me and tell me that I can do Better that I've got to work harder that I've got to focus better if you're getting comfortable You're already starting to give up on your purpose some of you Need to stay in discomfort especially in the job that you're in right now Sometimes you need to stay in a job that sucks. That's not always the case But in this day and time we work with companies all the time Millennials change jobs every two to three years in the DC metro area It's every 13 months and a lot of them are leaving jobs because they felt their first bad boss or bad experience You can't always leave a job that sucks sometimes you should but you can't always leave a job that sucks You're going to have jobs and relationships and bosses. You don't like some of you already do Stick with it. You want to start a company or a movement and you haven't stuck it through something like that How are you going to know what's bad and what's good and how to do it better? Those moments of challenge build you up build you muscle memory. That's going to be key for you to be successful later Step number three to be successful be respectful This is one of those old-school values that our generation doesn't necessarily see or celebrate Everyone wants to be respected It's a currency of mankind that we want to be seen and valued and know that what we do Matters, but here's the key in order to be respected. You have to respect other people You have to respect people even if they have different backgrounds and experiences and mindsets and lifestyles in you Because many of you want to change the world. This is a generation where we want to disrupt everything and And our our need to disrupt is oftentimes interpreted or misinterpreted as a need to disrespect We're not trying to disrespect the system We want to change things if you want to change things in order to be effective You need to realize that in order to be the most effective change agent you can be start with respect You're going to be much more effective and efficient as a change agent when you start with respect now The last step to success in your purpose and applying it to the marketplace is something that all of us here at fecon Understand and that's to live in abundance. We don't live in a limited pie There's not limited resources. We can create value in a marketplace We can create more pies when you know your purpose and you're you're living in abundance When you're in the middle of your purpose, you're not worried about what people are doing next to you or you're not on Instagram You know comparing your thigh gap You're not doing that. I know people do that apparently I just learned about this this Instagram Thy gap thing, but here's the point to be successful in your purpose in the marketplace The fourth thing is to have an abundance mindset It's okay if people are being successful next to you. In fact, that's good for you, too Because it encourages you to try harder But I want you to know something today about your purpose Your purpose is your permission Your purpose is your permission There's been a system that said you need to check the boxes take the tests go to this school spend this money No, no, no, you don't know enough yet. You haven't read enough yet You haven't written that doctoral thesis that took you seven years. I've seen people write books in three months ridiculous You don't need to do those things to get started Your purpose is your permission so many of you have been looking to your parents. Is it time yet? Should I do this? Should I do that? You've been looking to professors and mentors going maybe I should do this What do you think they don't care? They don't care as much as you do they might care a little bit, but they don't care and they were never supposed They're not in the middle of the night waking up going God I hope Johnny is thinking about his purpose and he gets up tomorrow and does it they don't care and It's the most liberating thing in the world to recognize that other people don't care about your purpose Because perhaps then you'll take responsibility for it Your purpose is your permission if you know what your dream is if you want to write a book if you want to start a company If you want to start a non-profit then do it now Don't hesitate like you hesitated a moment ago in the chair stand up stand up Never put the duty to achieve your purpose in someone else's hands Don't put it in the government's hands. Don't put it in a platform's hands. Don't put it in the media's hands Don't even put it in your parents hands because some of them don't even realize what you have the power to achieve I'm not knocking your parents. They're probably great people But it's your responsibility. It's your duty. We seek permission from everyone. We work with people all the time They're writing a book. We help people write books all the time. They're like, I'm waiting on this person I'm waiting on this editor. I'm waiting on this endorsement. I can't I can't I can't publish a book unless I have this I can't do that. It's constant excuses putting the duty of achieving their purpose into someone else's hands If you keep doing that, it's never gonna happen. There's no such thing as perfect timing do it right now Stop asking permission The way we're gonna change this economy is not going to be because we have the right political stance whether we're on the right or the left It's not because we're good at slinging red meat and saying somebody's a snowflake. It's none of those things What we have to do in this economy as a new generation of leaders is to solve problems with purpose That's what's required. That's what builds relationships. That's what creates value. That's what creates coalitions to achieve great things You had the permission all along The moment you dreamt it you had permission the moment you saw the sunset. That was your that was your sign Do it do it now You're gonna leave this conference. You're gonna be next to people or all fired up. Okay. Let's go do this Some of them are gonna quit. Are you gonna keep going? Are you gonna keep going? By the way, this isn't just age-specific here Some of you've been sitting on dreams for 20 30 40 years. I Talked to those folks all the time. I want to write a book. We helped the lady write a book 74 years old She wrote it in a month and a half. How many pages 125 pages short book wrote it in a month and a half She's terrible at typing. I don't know how she did it. She's amazing And she said to me when she finished that book Brian for the first time in 20 years I feel like I'm living my purpose. I said what took you so long Don't wait Do not wait if you're young you're not old enough to have regrets Try to build it so you don't have them Let your passion be what fuels you let your story be what has inspired you and let your purpose Be your permission