EP 26 - Steve Simonson - The Importance of Finding Your Why

Awesomers Insights  - Steve and from time to time other "insiders" will share their knowledge about specific topics to help the listeners improve their knowledge on a subject. We considered calling these episodes noesis shows, but we didn't know how to pronounce the word. By the way, Noesis means: The psychological of perception and learning and reasoning. We would choose this word because we want to help leaders develop into decision machines vs. always looking for an external solution.

Your personal why is what gives you motivation. It really is an extraordinary opportunity for you to find yourself empowered to go on and take on the world. For today’s Awesomer Insights episode, Steve talks about the importance of finding out your personal whys. Here are more gold nuggets on today’s episode: *What you need to establish your personal why. *The different phases of building a company and why knowing your whys can help you make decisions that are aligned to your goals. *Why you need to w rite your own eulogy and think about how you want to be remembered and more. *So put on your headphones and be inspired to take action in knowing your personal why.

Your personal why is what gives you motivation. It really is an extraordinary opportunity for you to find yourself empowered to go on and take on the world.

For today’s Awesomer Insights episode, Steve talks about the importance of finding out your personal whys. Here are more gold nuggets on today’s episode:

• What you need to establish your personal why.

• The different phases of building a company and why knowing your whys can help you make decisions that are aligned to your goals.

• Why you need to write your own eulogy and think about how you want to be remembered and more.

So put on your headphones and be inspired to take action in knowing your personal why.

Welcome to the Awesomers.com podcast. If you love to learn and if you're motivated to expand your mind and heck if you desire to break through those traditional paradigms and find your own version of success, you are in the right place. Awesomers around the world are on a journey to improve their lives and the lives of those around them. We believe in paying it forward and we fundamentally try to live up to the great Zig Ziglar quote where he said, "You can have everything in your life you want if you help enough other people get what they want." It doesn't matter where you came from. It only matters where you're going. My name is Steve Simonson and I hope that you will join me on this Awesomer journey.

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1.15 (Steve introduces today’s topic - establishing your personal why.)

Steve: Welcome again to the Awesomers.com podcast everybody. My name is Steve

Simonson and I'm thrilled to have you with us today today we are going to talk about one of my favorite topics and that is the idea of establishing your personal why. Now there's been recent discussion the past couple years by an author. Turns out he's a great author and thought leader named Simon Sinek and he talks about finding your why and that book is a great book and we'll probably talk about it later on a an episode of our book of the week but that's more about finding a company why and why a brand should exist and what a brand stands for. And what I'd like to talk to you today about is the idea that you need to understand your own personal why. Why are you doing this, well you know whatever it is you do, why are you doing it? And what's the point of it and it goes far beyond the day-to-day I need to put food on the table or my kids need a new pair of shoes. It's really about what drives your fulfillment and your satisfaction in the long run and I can't stress this enough. So you're listening to episode number 26 of the Awesomers.com podcast you as always can go to Awesomers.com/26 to find the show notes and details. That's Awesomers.com/26 so as we embark on this journey today talking about the mission of finding a person why, I want to really articulate why I believe it's important when you understand your why and the why really should be broken down into two or three sentences that really resonate. And I'll come back and we'll talk about that later as I go through some of the process but today we're going to talk about that exact process and we're going to give you some of the tips and hints and on the show notes pages, we'll probably even give you a worksheet to kind of help you work through it as well. I truly believe in this process. It is really important and it doesn't matter whether you call this your core mission or your personal why or as the EMF cause, your primary aim. The point of this exercise is for you to clearly define what is your big vision and the core why behind that vision. For example you know, “Hey maybe I want to live a life of freedom” or another opposite potential answer is, “Yey I want to build an empire” so it's very tough to build a life of freedom and build an empire just to share those contrasts right or you may say, “Hey I want to own an island” right and that's going to take more of that empire building and you know wealth generation. The opposite of that might be “Hey I want to live on a beach and do whatever I want. I don't care who owns the island that I'm on.” If it's an island. So I want to just start from the beginning and share that your why is unique to you. There is no right answer and if I told you my personal why although I'll probably allude to it from time to time and let you infer some of those takeaways.My why is different than your why for many reasons and so it's not just as simple as somebody else going, “Well tell me your why and I'll just hack my answer.” It's far too personal. It's far too important for that to be the case. So the question you have to ask yourself is why are you here? Why are you listening and do you really care about this topic of finding your why? Now, I intend to convince you that it's vital not just for your own personal satisfaction and reasons that may seem intangible but because the the direct connection, the tangible results have to your understanding of why is accelerated like you cannot believe that there really is a direct connection to those tangible results and it speeds up when you know your why and you get it right. So  I do want to reinforce it, you know we're all responsible for our own results. So even if I tell you my why even if I infer somehow that you know my why includes this topic or that topic, you shouldn't take that and just go “Oh I'm going to hack my way to this answer. This is an easy thing because I heard kind of what Steve said it makes sense to me and I kind of feel the same way.” I definitely would just tell you that if you follow the process to find your why, you are much more likely to have something that's personal and visceral even that resonates with you when you get your why right and you've synthesized it down as we'll talk about in this process I'm going to share with you. When you read the document and you read those you know two or three sentences that summarize your why, you should feel, you should feel physiologically in your body that goes “Holy catfish this is my why.” This really is something. I'm willing to put it out there for so this is a very important thing and it's so personal as I said earlier that I just don't want you to miss the chance to to take a moment, take responsibility for your own results and remind yourself that you're here because you want to accomplish this goal and I'm going to take you through the exact steps of how to find your why as we go through these concepts together. Okay now I do want to remind everybody that why I do this stuff. I have a general philosophy that I love entrepreneurs and that I believe that the world is better when entrepreneurs are contributing. They make stuff, they don't take stuff. And I also have a personal philosophy that I'm at your service. I love to help entrepreneurs as best I can and my podcast is one of the ways I intend to do that. I know I talked about at the top of the show with the introduction but I really do believe in the great Zig Ziglar quote where he says, “You can have everything in life you want, if you'll just help other people get what they want.” And that there's almost no greater mission that I could deliver than helping you find your why. Now I'll never take credit for it. That's your own work, it's your own result but just if I can just nudge in the direction, that's personally fulfilling for me. And that's why I do this. So this is a very personal thing. This is something that I truly believe in and this is not just you know the soup du jour of the marketing. This is something I have been pounding the drums on for you know well over a decade maybe close to 20 years and it's only as a result of me being coached, me being drawn through the process to find my own why did I realize the power of it. And I should point out by the way that once I finally got through that process and it was rigorous and it was arduous and I didn't like it. I'll be honest I did not like it. I was mostly annoyed at my coach during the process. Only at the point I finally got it that I said “Oh now this is meaningful to me. Now I get it.” And so I had to trust in that process and that's what I'm asking you to do, just trust a little bit that it'll be worth it and I intend to illustrate why it is worth it and why it should be so powerful in your life.

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Steve: Okay but let's let's back up before we talk about the personalization of your why and the kind of core concepts of your why. Let's talk about when you start a company. So it doesn't matter the type of company you started. It can be you know a local carpet cleaning company, can be a law firm, it can be an E-commerce company but if you're starting something, that daycare, anything - it doesn't matter. You kind of have this epiphany right. Now as they call it the lightning strikes and you have the idea, you decide to take action and develop that idea into an actual business. That's the birth of your business right. So you have a life cycle of a business when the business is just you know being birthed if you will. Everyone you know involved, you know if you're a founder level person you're excited about it. Now normies, if you talk to normies and you're like, “Hey lightning just struck I'm super excited!” Normies go, “Hey that sounds like a really interesting idea.” Interesting being code for terrible and they will also say, “Yes I don't know if you should do that. Maybe she just stays at your job at the you know local printing press or wherever you're working.” So the normies around you will do their best to try to protect you and they will try to keep you out of developing your idea. That's okay just push through it and mostly I would just say ignore it. But when lightning strikes you have an energy and an excitement and it's really really something that builds on itself, it's got its own life, it's electric and if you have co-founders or maybe early employees you'll feel that electricity when things are going. Now when you move from birth to infancy this is where you're refining the idea right. And I like to use the picture of a jigsaw puzzle because you're trying to figure out how the pieces go together. I've got this idea. I want to deliver this product or this service but I'm not sure how to put the pieces together just yet. I don't know how they fit, one to the other and I can't even quite see the total picture of this jigsaw puzzle just yet, I just know it's something cool and I'm you know highly motivated to figure it out. That's the infancy where you're really trying to suss it out and to develop what the core idea is. Now as you move from kind of that infancy into the child phase of your company history, you start to realize, “Hey this is something special. Something's happening here.” And you're really excited about it you, you see a little traction and you're like, “Hey we made some sales, where we developed this training course or this product or service.” Whatever the case may be and people are starting to respond, “That's interesting.” And it feels good. In the back of your mind, you've got impostor syndrome that is weighing in going, “Yes but is it real? You always put real in quotes. Is it a real business? Sure I made some traction and I've made some sales but is this going to last? Do I really feel that this is something that can have staying power? That's the child phase of your company. Now you know child is where you start to begin the fastest growth in your revenue and it moves on to the teenage years. Now, this is when you have systems and you have people and you have people running the systems and the growth is positive. You have something we call leverage right. So the more revenue you add, the more profit falls to the bottom line. The opposite of leverage for those keeping score at home is when you the more you grow the top line, the more you lose in the bottom line. That is not leverage. That is growing your overhead faster than your profits, you're contributing profit on an item or a product service whatever or you somehow you know eliminated your margins so you have no contribution margin and therefore your rep doesn't matter how many much in revenue you do, you'll always start to lose more money as you grow. That's not a very sustainable business. You know in your teen years you do get some rebellious stuff happening from your business. You may find somebody who files a lawsuit against you. You may find that you've had an employee that you really loved and they stole all your stuff and went out and copied you. Or even have an employee you really hated and you fire them and then they you know took you in in front of some sort of tribunal or another kind of lawsuit thing. There are all kinds of things that happen during these teenage years. It's really really fun in general because of the fast growth but you can get a hangover from time to time so beware. So as you look at this kind of evolution you'll see that you know your company's growing up, it's getting more sophisticated. You started in the beginning and now you're at a point where it's starting to mature and when you reach kind of the adult phase of your business this is where things are running nominally pretty predictably. When you reach a certain size and you can decide what that size is, you can set the milestone yourself. The founder has to decide - do they want to keep running this company? Do they want to exit the company? What do they want to do? And when you know your why, you actually have a better chance of knowing the answer of when that milestone should be and what the choice should be as well. So for example, if part of your why is that you want to have a freedom lifestyle, that probably means that you know you would like to disengage from a business. So either the business has to run itself and you've got good management, good systems and so you can disengage and go you know live on that beach and have that life of freedom or perhaps it means you're going to exit the business and you're going to sell that business. And so I would encourage you as you know one rationale or one reason as to the motivation of to find your why is to understand that when you know your why early, every decision that you make during the company's progress from birth to infancy, child, teen, adult, you’re making decisions that are consistent with your personal why. In fact, your personal why is baked into how the company operates. If your why is that you're going to build an empire, then you're building for scale. You want to have a lot of people, a lot of systems, and a lot of growth and that's what's going to help you deliver your personal why. When you say I just want a lifestyle business I want this thing to contribute a thousand a month to me, ten thousand a month to me, a hundred thousand a month to me, it doesn't matter what the number is but you have to engineer it towards that outcome. So knowing your why again, it's kind of like having the secret formula ahead of time because all the decisions throughout the company should be made kind of based on delivering that personal why. To me and I think this has been articulated in many publications, your business is a tool. It's an economic tool. It's not actually a baby.  I know I just gave the metaphor of the baby and the infancy and the little toddler business and the child and now it's a teen business and maybe you're going to send it off to college but it's not really a living entity. I use the analogy to demonstrate that it will grow and mature but I want to reinforce that, no it's not you know biological, it's just a financial instrument. It should meet the goals that you've set for it on a financial basis, not just a pride basis. I'm proud that we achieve this goal or I'm proud that we have a TV commercial running or whatever you know, whatever little moments of ego that we have and those are fine to have but don't let that drive your decision. Make it a financial instrument. Make it something that is providing a service towards your why.

17.27 (Steve talks about how finding out what you don’t want ultimately leads you to what you want.)

Okay, I like to drive the point home with you know kind of helping you see an image that is just indelible in your mind you know about what you don't want in your life. So you know maybe it starts with you and you say, “Hey what do I want in my life?” What does that include? What does that look like? You just kind of daydream for a minute and you say you know oh man it includes you know I don't have to answer to the alarm, that oppressive alarm clock that's been you know beating me down. Or I don't want to you know have to be stuck in traffic on a commute every day. I want to decide my time and where I go and what I do and what you'll find is what you do want is often a result of what you don't want. And we're going to talk a little bit more about that later but you know when you start thinking about what you do want, you start by eliminating all the things that you don't want it to include. So the point is if you align your big picture strategy with all of the awesome or tactics presented here, you're going to be able to earn the dream. Now notice I didn't say live the dream. You're going to earn the dream and you're going to do that by contributing by creating, by adding value and only then do you earn what you have right. We don't make stuff. We don't take stuff. Now I do say that I'm a lucky guy and I feel lucky right. It's not a hundred percent accurate as I like to say that you know most of my luck is a result, maybe 99% result of extraordinary hard work combined with unbelievable gut-wrenching risks and by the way those risks haven't always gone my way. I've definitely encountered obstacles and massive you know losses and failures but the reality is I knew my why and most people don't know their why and I'll just tell you spoiler alert, it's not money. Your why is where the alignment of your business and all the decision-making that is built around that business and your personal life are engineered towards delivering that personal why. The why is so much more than the business and by the way the why is much more important than the how. Don't get caught up. There's a book called, it references the tyranny of how. Don't worry about the how yet just get down to the why. And you have to begin somewhere.

19.58 (Steve talks about the method for finding your why.)

Okay, so we're going to just dive now into the actual system for finding your why. So this is a really a method for you to dig in and figure it out. So first of all on a foundational level, you want to find you know what drives your satisfaction, what drives our happiness. You know, why will you be happy and what delivers fulfillment and satisfaction in your life day to day? Now that's a good question and what do you imagine it will be in the future? Now once you kind of understand some of those foundational components then you need to you know think about how do I want to guide this process? You're trying to find yourself, you're trying to find what really motivates you and these types of guidance requirements are essential to finding your happiness. It's again spoiler, it's not about the bling, it's not about stuff at least it's not in my case. You personally are the most relevant part. I often reflect and share the idea that you know when you're on your deathbed and you know little Sarah's pushed up next to you, the you know great-grandchild or whatever and you know you don't say, “Oh oh man you're really rocking those kicks huh #Imcool.” You know when you're on that deathbed, you don't really care that if you're in the perfectly you know branded and designer wear at that moment. You don't care you know what kind of car you drive. You don't care about any of that kind of stuff. You care about the things that around you that really do matter and that are enduring and lasting.  It's not about bling or stuff in my opinion and certainly not in my case. Now as you move from that foundational level into the guidance level then you got to commit to working the process this is how you really unlock your why and I'll tell you, you'll be tempted to procrastinate it. You'll also be tempted to just kind of ignore it after you start it so I highly encourage you that if you decide to start this process and I recommend that you do, that you commit to yourself that you won't stop until you find your why. And at least you know checking in with yourself weekly about it is worthwhile. Spend a half an hour a week, it may take you some time. Some people nail it instantly although in general, I think they probably haven't refined it quite as well as they could have but for most of us myself included, it took a while so it worked the process. And as I said I was bitter half the time at my coach for pushing this process and you know in my case probably if I didn't have a coach I probably wouldn't have gotten all the way through to the other side. He really did push me and he was a great influence on my life. So the next thing after you've worked the process is that you launch and you say, “Yes this is my why. I'm going to make it part of my day-to-day routine.” The why then becomes a barometer for all the decisions that you make. So let's talk about this process of finding your why. It really is quite simple. You start out with what you don't want right and I alluded to this earlier where I said you know it's sometimes easier to imagine those things that you want to take out of your life. Maybe it's taking out the alarm clock that's annoying you, maybe it's taking out the boss that's annoying you. Maybe it's just changing the fact that you don't want to spend two or three hours in traffic every single day start by listing out the things that you don't want in your life right. It's far easier to start with that then you come down and say, “Well alright now that I know what I don't want what do I want?” and it's shocking if you say I don't want to have to respond to the alarm clock then you say I want to sleep in if I want right and that might translate into I want time independence or time freedom right and you start to think about the opposites of what you don't want probably are what you do want. And then you come into the prioritization phase where you start to say all right now that I see you know I've listed that this oppressive alarm clock is is annoying and so I don't want that in my life but I do want you know the freedom to set my own time and that's an important criteria for me. Maybe it's my number one, but you may through the prioritization phase decide, “You know what, time is important to me. It's number two or three but really I want to be location independent. I don't want to be stuck in traffic but more I don't want to be stuck in one place. I want to be able to travel the world while I you know operate my business or you know create my you know part in the world.” That whatever your business is,  whatever way you're making it in the world to make ends meet, if you decide location independence is most important to you, put that at the top of the list. Just a simple prioritization. When you do that, you'll find yourself challenged. You go, “Well I want both of these, they're equally important but really nothing's really equally important. There's always some way to prioritize even if it's just a little bit one thing over the other. Now the final part of finding your why, this process is quite simple remarkably simple but it can be tough and grueling as I like to say, the most important thing is again work on it every week. So the final phase is where you synthesize the message down into two or three sentences that encapsulate your why and when you do it, this is what gives you energy. This is what gives you motivation and it really is an extraordinary opportunity for you to find yourself empowered to go on and take on the world.

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26.01 (Steve dives deeper into finding out what you don’t want.)

Steve: So let's dive in a little deeper to the what you don't want phase. Often and I talk about this all the time sometimes we just have to suck things up and carry on right. And that's life, sometimes that's absolutely true but especially as I've gotten older and especially as I've gained more experience, I've given myself permission to dislike certain aspects of business or for that matter even life. And that I seek to reduce or eliminate those over time. So what are some examples? So when I started in business you know I had to do every single job myself right? Unloading the trucks, finance, you know customer service, sales, warranty, answering the phone right? Every little job. Now I wasn't mad about it, I wasn't bitter but I knew I just had to suck it up and carry on. That's what you do when you start things up but over time I realized I don't really like this finance stuff. I don't like the dealing with those details so but I know I need to have it you know for all the reasons that you can surmise yourself. Financials are very important. It's a scorecard of how you're doing so I hired that out and gave myself permission not to have to suck that up and deal with it, this foundational concept of giving yourself permission to dislike things. It’s something that took me a while to get there. I thought as the boss and as the founder, I just had to deal with whatever came up and fundamentally I'm responsible for whatever comes up but when I don't like certain things I hire people who do like those things and I have a great example. Sheree and I have worked together on and off for the past 20 plus years probably. She's brilliant, she's exceptional in every possible way and she is super super smart and she loves some of the things that I hate. So we'll often get into inventory discussions. We're doing inventory forecasting, we're doing inventory purchasing and we have a process that we go through that I'll probably share with you guys later about how we manage our inventory and deal with those types of things. And by the way, you know times we've managed tens of millions of dollars worth of inventory. That's kind of the same process that we use whether we have a hundred thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars of inventory or ten million dollars of inventory. The same process applies and that process involves putting a bunch of data into spreadsheets and then having rules and then humans kind of evaluate those rules and see if everything is coming out and then making decisions. The assembly of that spreadsheet is a nightmare. I would go insane if I had to do that yet Sheree loves it. She loves to get into those details. She loves to get in those weeds and she's energized by it and it sucks the life right out of me and this is the point about the what you don't want. There's always somebody else who has the strength that you don't have and this is why it's okay to “let's put that resource in place to help us” right. So when you make a list of the things you don't want, start with the things that are the very worst. Not just the things that you don't like but the things that breed negativity hate, pressure, noise and you know anything that is really annoying and you know for me things like that nightly news. Like I thought I needed to stay informed,  I used to watch the nightly news or listen to talk radio and it would just make me mad most of the time. And it's like I'm taking those out. I don't need them and then you start to you know get to the other things that maybe aren't so obvious. Things like I don't really like to do the inventory you know report even watching the report my eyes can glaze over let alone assembling the report. Or I don't really want to have to do my own bookkeeping or I don't really want to have to do you know pick your poison. As you do this, you're going to highlight five to ten of the things that you think are most critical to reduce or eliminate from your life right and you're going to rank those, you're going to break them we go, I've got to eliminate this first and foremost and then you start to imagine your life without those things and then you finalize your ideas as a part of this process. And again I want to remind you at the end I'm going to give you instructions on how you can go get your free process that will actually walk you through these. So this is the overview but we’ll have a little workbook that can help you find your why. It's free don't worry about. It's all there for you so as you get through this process. You do the brainstorm, you do the review, then you rank those items you know first to worst or maybe it's worst to first I don't know. Then you imagine your life with those things being eliminated that gives you the motivation to go yes I don't really want to be stuck in traffic three hours a day. By the way I've come at times where it's an hour and a half each direction and again I was like, “Hey I got to suck it up. This is what I have to do. I'm the leader and no time to complain about it.” It wouldn't help if I did but at a certain point it's like I don't want to have to do that anymore so what do I got to do in my life to eliminate that? And I encourage you to find that same line of logic. Once you're done with the imagination process, then you finalize your ideas on what is most important.

So what do you want in your life? So as we talked about, understanding what you don't want in your life is really the key to unlocking probably the opposite of what you really do want in your life right. So when you take the list of the negatives from the last exercise and you consider the opposites, you probably are starting to get a picture of what you really do want right. In my mind, if you have a rewarding and satisfying life, it requires you to give a very authentic and genuine view of those emotions because if you don't, if you're not honest with yourself, you're really not helping yourself right. If you're like, “Oh no I'm tough. I can handle this.” Even though you know your guts are telling you I hate this commute, I hate this alarm clock or I hate this situation whatever it may be because your brain is still telling you, “No you have to do it. You're responsible for it. Just suck it up cupcake, let's go.” and I'm saying maybe you can't eliminate it today but if it's really something that is not helping drive your happiness and satisfaction then figure out a way to engineer it to disappear to overcome the obstacles which we're going to talk about in a minute. And then finally as you go through that what you do want to get rid of is the superficial right.  Superficial leads to hollowness and dissatisfaction ironically. So you know if you're trying to count how many helicopters you have or how many Ferraris you have in your garage, that's fine. You can have those as goals or objectives but it's probably not part of your personal why. When you are dead and buried it doesn't matter how many Ferraris you have in there. You won't even care and none of the people around you will really care except the people who inherit them. And I just want to remind you that the superficial is not a super fulfilling area to live in and you can disagree with me if you wish that's okay but for my experience, that's the truth. Okay, the next step is to simply prioritize those key factors and identify the obstacles that are kind of standing in your way. So again when we've talked about this idea of producing a positive outcome, it requires that you eliminate or at least reduce the things that are generating negativity in your life right. And again for me external things that I could control like, “Hey I don't have to watch the nightly news. I don't have to listen to talk radio. I'll listen to podcasts. I'll listen to what Zig Ziglar used to call it automobile university like I can just listen even during the commute. I switch from listening to talk radio many many years ago to listen to tapes. Yes, that's right #Ihadatapeplayer in my car is that too long for hashtag millennials? Anyway, the point is you can make use of your time I fly around a lot and I listen to the podcasts that are recorded. They don't always have to be educational by the way. They could b entertainment. It's okay to let your mind wander, you don't have to constantly be learning and fundamentally I think it's it's important for you to proactively choose to be happy and know it's not selfish. I believe it's an absolute necessity. If you don't position your own personal happiness at the very top of the stack of things to do, everybody else will suffer. If you're not happy, how well can you take care of those around you? How well you can support your spouse, your kids, your family, your friends, your company? You've got to figure out how to make your own happiness a priority and you know the hashtag hustle and all this stuff is kind of working against that concept and I really want to advise you to just take a moment and you know to be. If you think it's selfish to be happy then be selfish right. I don't think it is selfish. I think it's paramount to get that dialed in and make sure that everybody around you could benefit from you being at your very best. Now the prioritization process is pretty simple. Pick you know one or two things on the list and imagine what the barriers are that exist currently that prevent you from achieving whatever you want to do right now right. So on your list, you've probably gotten some things that are organized in such a way that you say this is important I need to break these barriers. And it is not you know it's not as simple as just saying “Yes, I'm just going to stop commuting.” Well if you're required to commute to you know carry on and make a living day-to-day then you can't just eliminate that commute this day but you may be able to say, “Alright, in one year from now I'm going to eliminate this commute.” Again don't get buried in the how at this moment. We'll come back to that another time. It's just figuring out what you want to do and when you want to do it all right. I do think it's an important thing to write your own eulogy right. This is a concept that's been put forward by a number of thought leaders over time. Think about how you want to be remembered, write your own eulogy to think about you know how you want to be remembered. It's probably not you know how many cars you had or how many islands or helicopters or things we've already talked about. It's probably you know what kind of person you were. Were you a nice person? Were you a jerk? Were you generous? Were you stingy? Were you happy? Did you lift up the people around you in whatever way you could or were you just a negative energy? Now very few people are going to write that on your tombstone. This guy was a real jerk. We disliked him immensely and we only took the time and the money to put together this tombstone to be sure everybody knew he was a real a-hole right. That's probably not going to happen but the best advice I have for you is to write your own eulogy. How do you want to see it go and think about how you wish to be remembered. It really is an important thing and this is a common process. I talk about this all the time. Let's start with the end and start you know, with the end in mind we engineer at the beginning and that tells us the how to put these things together over time. Alright now we're going to synthesize the process down and it's a very simple review time right. We're going to review everything we've assembled so far and we're trying to synthesize this down in that two to three sentences I've talked about earlier this is the core, the real essence of what your why is. Your personal why is delivered in that two to three sentences. So that review is step one of the synthesisation process. Is that a word? Synthesisation? Well if it is, I'm mispronouncing it as is my custom but I'll pull a Porky Pig out to say when you're synthesizing the process, review is the first step. Step two is to eliminate any redundancy right. If you are talking about the same emotions or feelings or things that are important in your why, try to take those down and reduce them down to just one core concept or attribute. There's no need to have redundancy. If you're trying to get to two to three sentences right now then you need to kind of memorialize what you have right, you want to memorize the ideas in your final statements. When you actually get this process, you know figured out, it's down to two to three sentences - print it out, put it on your you know your office wall, put it in your bathroom, read it every morning and I would definitely read it at least weekly. But I would recommend at least daily for anybody. Following the Miracle Morning, it's a fine book and and something we'll cover in the book of the week later but there's a morning process where you go through and you can just you know add that to your morning process just to read your why and be sure that it still continues to give you that feeling, that physiological reaction that says “yes, this is the right thing” and to the extent, it doesn't start to tweak it and figure out why it's not hitting now. Sometimes the why, it's not hitting because you're just, your mind is not there right and 80% of you know this process is getting your mindset right so have faith. Check it out and know that you know sometimes you may be up but sometimes you may be down but your why should be enduring. Finally, you know feel free to experiment with this and keep going until you have that physical reaction I've talked about. That's the clear sign that you've hit you know your kind of core mission, your core objective when you have that physical reaction you know you're on the right path. Now when we come back I'm going to give you some final notes and details but first, we're going to take this sponsor break right now.

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Steve: Okay, we're back everybody and we're talking about the expected results when once you achieve the “find your why process” right. So you now, you've got that two to three sentences. You've got it synthesized down, it's resonating with you and here's some of the things that you will see that will impact your life in a better way, in a positive way almost immediately. First of all, how you view yourself will change for the better and it doesn't matter how great you are, all of us have negative self-talk from time to time. And I number one recommend you avoid that process even though myself, I will get caught up into it, despite my own advice but how you view yourself day to day will change for the better and probably reduce if nothing else that negative self-talk. By the way, your world view, your behaviors, and general perception will improve and the perception of both you perceiving the world and the people around you will perceive you in a different way. They will say this guy or gal she's behaving differently they just think yes this person has their act together so the view both of yourself, you know by yourself and you from the external world will all seem to improve on every you know part of that viewpoint. So in my view, ideation is one of the next things that helps really increase. With a clear why you'll be free to create you know personal and business priorities without worrying. When you have a new idea you just have to say, does it serve my personal way? And you're like, “No it does not. It's out.” right or you say it doesn't serve my personal why, this new idea and if the answer is yes, “Boom! Let's get it going. let's make something happen.” This all causes momentum and you start to feel over time that the momentum even becomes almost self-sustaining right well, perpetual motion is the concept here and sometimes that perpetual motion can pick you up even when you're down and that's a good thing. So you know these things have a tendency to take on a life of their own and the more positive it is the better the results will be and that why will drive the positive you know interactions at the day-to-day decision level and finally you know your building blocks are the critical part of you know kind of putting your whole plan together and this is just building block number one. So it's pivotal, it's crucial but it's only the beginning of the journey. It's not the end right. After all, we're just trying to engineer this outcome but now that we know it, we're better equipped to make decisions day to day and finally your ability to execute and just getting the job done will improve because you know the answer to your core of why right. And as I'd like to say it really is your barometer for any big decisions. You should always look at it and say you know does this resonate? Is this right for me? Does this make the why advance and if not you move on. It really should be that simple when you know often entrepreneurs especially get so many ideas and so many things and opportunities thrown at them. They say to themselves well I could make this work and you start rationalizing, yes I could just modify this and change and you know move this over here and then I got another revenue source and right and you start this ideation process but if it's really not consistent with your why, eliminate it from the beginning and wait for the next thing that is aligned to come along. Okay so as we wrap this up we were talking about the future here right and you're the one who's in charge of the future. It's your choice. it's your future, it's your responsibility. Honestly, nobody else controls it. Nobody else can make it happen for you so you have to decide you know if your why is important. You know the definition of your why is important in my opinion and it makes your life a lot better in in so many ways; your business life, your personal life. It really does and the more that you understand it, the more powerful it becomes. And when that happens then and only then the process will have the best chance of success and I want to remind you to be patient. It takes time to understand the process but you have to trust the process. And again if you go to Awesomers.com/26 , you'll see a process or instructions on how you can get this process to find your own why and go through the process. So some final little quick words of wisdom. First of all there are no wrong answers okay. It doesn't matter what your personal why is, as it resonates with you, nobody else. If you happen to share this with your friend or your spouse or somebody and they laugh or tell you that it sounds stupid, if it really is resonating with you stick with it. It's still you. It's something personal to you. Don't get distracted. We often have the shiny object syndrome and of course shiny objects are everywhere and so rarely I want to just say that rarely do the shiny objects add value long-term. Sometimes they're fun and they're nice little distractions but long-term they don't often add value therefore you should stay focused. Don't get distracted and then of course remember the beginning and I say that because I want you to as you start the journey, it can be difficult to maintain the momentum. Take your time remember why you started this process. The why of finding your why ironically, and know that the real power once you unleashed it is extraordinarily enduring. It really is something that can impact your life in a positive way. In fact, you know often people ask me you know what's that the secret to business? Or what's the you know silver bullet you can share with me? And I tell them there's no silver bullet, it's a bunch of little things. But if there was a silver bullet, it would be finding your way okay and I really think it's probably the number one thing that can add leverage to your life, is if you identify your why and you can articulate in that two to three sentences to yourself. You don't to share it with others. And it has that physical visceral reaction to you. It should be that powerful to you and let's not really forget that the end is coming right - death and taxes. No way you're getting around those. So why not create a legacy you could be proud of? Why not live a life worth living right? I am definitely opposed to this idea of you know #hustlingforever and having nothing but you know gritty stories about my 18-hour days or pulling all-nighters which by the way I've done all of that. I have pulled all-nighters before a bank finance meeting. You know trying to get loans or funding. I've done you know the gritty you know 20 plus 30 plus hour stretches especially when I'm traveling. That's part of life sometimes but creating a life worth living is doing that stuff in intervals where it's necessary and maybe it's accomplishing part of your way right. For me traveling and having a location independent lifestyle is important to me so it doesn't bother me if I have to travel for 20 or 30 hours at a time to get wherever I want to go. That's part of the you know paying the toll. So just know that you know having a life worth living and creating a legacy that you can be proud of, those are things that are contributing to your why and I think is important for you to consider for the long run for your future.  

So finally we've completed episode number 26 of the Awesomers.com podcast so Awesomers.com/26 is where you go and we do have a documented process that we'll share with you and it's something that's very simple for you to you know take a look at. You can you know download the PDF and actually, the spoiler alert is if you go to this Awesomers.com and you join, subscribe to the mailing list. If this process will get set up to you. So I know it's been a little longer episode that I intended to be honest with you. But it's really an important thing it's another Awesomers insight episode. We hope you enjoyed it and don't forget to share this with your friends or people that you think would benefit from it. Thanks, everybody.

Well, we've done it again everybody. We have another episode of the Awesomers podcast ready for the world. Thank you for joining us and we hope that you've enjoyed our program today. Now is a good time to take a moment to subscribe, like and share this podcast. Heck, you can even leave a review if you wanted. Awesomers around you will appreciate your help. It's only with your participation and sharing that we'll be able to achieve our goals. Our success is literally in your hands. Thank you again for joining us. We are at your service. Find out more about me, Steve Simonson, our guest, team and all the other Awesomers involved at Awesomers.com . Thank you again.