Episode 22: Persistence with Coach BZ

Welcome to the Leadership and Success Podcast with your host, Coach Beezy. If you need to develop into a better leader, this podcast is for you. If you want to achieve a greater level of success,, this podcast is for you. His mentor, Dr. John C. Maxwell, said it best: everything rises and falls on leadership. We hope to inspire you today and provide you with an insight that has the potential to positively impact the trajectory of your life. Welcome to the Leadership and Success Podcast.

Hello everyone, this is Uncle Chibisi coming to you from an undisclosed location. Uh, And I am going to be talking just briefly today about persistence, right? Welcome to the live LinkedIn podcast. If you are watching live, I think a couple of you guys are, please type your question in the comment box on LinkedIn and I'm going to try to address them before we close today. But let's just talk about persistence. I really believe that persistence is a master key to success. I think I probably attribute most of my success to just being dogged, persistent, right? Not taking no for an answer, knowing what you want in life and going after it with everything you've got. And even when people say no, trying to find a way to kind of go around it, go above it, go under it, like blow up the obstacle or do whatever you need to do in order to get to where you are, to where you want to be, refusing to be denied. I think that really has a lot to do with becoming successful. Earlier, I was speaking to— with Commander Theresa Carpenter. She had a very interesting, exciting story, and she shared with us how she started as an enlisted, and within, what, 23, 25 years, she became a commander, which is the senior officer in the U.S. Navy. And throughout her career, she had a lot of adversity, one of them being having to go through a medical board, which I had to do as well. The Navy was ready to get rid of her. She's like, no, I'm not going anywhere, I'm gonna stay. And then she stated her case and she stayed. I think that persistence, like, I belong here, I am going to make it no matter what. So I want to read quickly a couple of quotes related to persistence, one of them by my mentor Brian Tracy. He says, never consider the possibility of failure. As long as you persist, you will be successful. I believe it was Tony Robbins who told me this story where an invading army went into the enemy's camp, so they went by a boat, and when they got there, once all of the soldiers got on dry land, the captain of the boat said, "Okay, let's burn the ship, let's burn it," meaning, you know, we are going to fight and we are going to win or we are going to die, there is no way to retreat. Like they gave themselves 0% chance of retreating. So we either fight until death, or, uh, you know, or we are gonna die. That's it. Those are the only two options we have. And of course, uh, I can't remember which army that was, but they did win that battle because they really didn't have any option. Reminds me of what Patrick Henry, one of our founding fathers here in the US, said, uh, during the Revolutionary War, right? Give me liberty or give me death. And I think that's Sometimes there are some decisions that are very important that you have to make, and you have to put yourself in a mental state that I am going to win, I'm going to do it no matter what, you know, or at least I am willing to even give my life trying, right? And I think when you are that persistent, it's almost impossible for anyone and anything to kind of resist you. Another great example of that is Thomas Edison, right? He invented the light bulb, which pretty much changed the world. And supposedly he went through like more than 9,000 trials. It took him 10,000 trials before he was able to find the right, uh, combination to make the light bulb work. So what if he had just given up after the first trial, or the second trial, or the third trial? And most of us, we give up too soon. As soon as we have just an hint of an obstacle or a challenge, we just give up. And that is not right. If you really, really want something bad enough, you really have to give everything you've got. You've got to go for it. You have to be persistent. And things may not go very well, and you may even fall and fail. That is okay. Failure is, I believe, another side of success, right? Success, I believe, is a coin with two sides. One side is success, but the other side is failure. And failure is part of that. If you want to be successful, you have to go through failure and learn from it. And that's why every leader I've ever had on this podcast, I always ask them, how has failure shaped your life? Because anybody who's a leader today with a great success has had to go through failure and learn from their mistakes. Everybody fails, everyone. Nobody is perfect. But I think you need to have an excellent spirit and you have to be consistent, target persistent, and don't take no for an answer. Another great example is one I think historians believe is the greatest president in the United States, Abraham Lincoln. And really his life story is, you know, failed, failed, failed, and then persistence. And how is that possible? Well, in 1831 Abraham Lincoln failed in business, and in '32 he was defeated for state legislator, and then in '33 he tried another business that failed again, and his fiancée died in 1835. He had a breakdown in 1836, And in 1843, he went for Congress, politics again, and he failed, defeated. And again in 1848, he tried to run again, he was defeated once more. The next year, he tried to run for vice president and he lost. In 1859, he went for the Senate again and he was defeated once more. And in 1860, finally, the man who signed his name Abraham Lincoln was elected the 16th president of the United States. As they say, the rest is history. Persistence, persistence, persistence. So the difference between history's boldest accomplishments and its most staggering failures is often simply the diligent will to persevere. Do you have the will to persevere? Now, I wrote an article on LinkedIn a while back, Speak to Me. These are poems and words I like to go to, to kind of inspire me. There is one, It's actually a speech by President Theodore Roosevelt, our 26th president. He gave this speech in Paris. And it's going to be read by the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, Caliph O'White. And I want you to listen to that for just a moment. This might just motivate you the way it motivates me.

It is not the critic who counts. Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again. Because there is no effort without error and shortcoming. But who does actually strive to do the deeds, who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Yeah, I just love that portion of the speech. The man in the arena, somebody who's trying valiantly. May not be successful, but trying the very best he or she can. Try and try and try again, being persistent, persevering, and I think eventually you will find success. Like in my own life, I remember after 9/11 here in the US, I tried to join the US military. I talked to everyone. I talked to the Army, to the Air Force, to the Navy, to the Coast Guard, to everybody, and they all said no, no, no, no, don't qualify, cannot, cannot join. And then I said, OK, what do I need to join? And they're like, OK, you have to be a US citizen or at least have a green card, be a permanent resident in the US. I'm like, OK, I'm neither one of those two things, but no, I'll be back. And 3 years later in 2004, I became a permanent resident. And then I went back and talked to them again. And I was lucky to join the US Navy. But I really wanted to become an officer. I already had a degree. And I really wanted to develop into a— later, but again they told me, okay, yeah, you can join as an enlisted man, uh, being a permanent resident in the US, but you can't be an officer because you are not a US citizen yet. Well, I said, okay, no problem, let me join in as an enlisted man right now. But a year and a half later, I became a US citizen. I was in 2006, and the day after I became a US citizen, I went back to the officer corps. I said, okay, you said I need to be a US citizen to become an officer. Here I am now. Uh, what do I need to do in order to become an officer in the US Navy? And it took about a year and a half or so, and in 2007, I was commissioned a U.S. Naval officer, an ensign in the IP community. And again, like they say, the rest is history. And this past year, this past April, I really achieved one of my dreams, which was to become a senior officer in the most powerful navy in the world. I made commander. And just a couple of days ago, I found out I got selected for command. So I'm going to become a commanding officer this fiscal year 2022. Here's another story about that too. I've been trying to become a commanding officer since 2015. I went back to the Apply Billet portal. I applied in 2015, I didn't get selected, rejected. In 2016, rejected. 2017, rejected. 2018, rejected. 2019, rejected. 2020, rejected. And finally in 2021, the Navy, uh, just had great confidence in me and decided to give me one of the highest, uh, level of, uh, job, right, of billet any officer can have, being a commanding officer of a naval unit. It finally happened to me. So what I'm telling you is not just something I've read or something, uh, you know, I have heard. It's really something I've lived myself my entire life. I think that's really probably one of the master keys to my success, just being persistent, not taking no for an answer, and finding a way to achieve, uh, your dreams. So the last thing I would like for you to listen before we go is a poem. The poem was actually written by, let's see, it was written by Burton Bradley. The poem is called Success. Les Brown recites this poem and like only Les Brown can. Let's listen to it now.

I want to dedicate this to you that I love very much. I want to thank Dexter and all of you. It's something that I'm known by. It's on our tapes called Choosing Your Future. It says simply this: that if you want a thing bad enough to go out and fight for it, to work day and night for it, to give up your time, your peace, and your sleep for it, if all that you dream and scheme is about it, and life seems useless and worthless without it, And if you gladly sweat for it and fret for it and plan for it and lose all your terror of the opposition for it, and if you simply go after that thing that you want with all of your capacity, strength and sagacity, faith, hope, and confidence, and stern pertinacity, if neither cold poverty, famish or gout, sickness or pain of body and brain can keep you away from the thing that you want, if dogged and grim You besiege and beset it. With the help of God, you'll get it. This is Mrs. Mamie Brown's baby boy, Leslie Calvin Brown, saying it's been a plum pleasing pleasure as well as a privilege. Thank you.

All right. So if that's not persistent, I don't know what persistence is, right? When you want something bad enough to really give everything you've got to go after it, and I believe you will get it. So hopefully on these few words I've encouraged you today, and, uh, be persistent to your success. I love you, and until next time, this is Coach Bizzy.

Bye.

Thank you for listening to the Leadership and Success Podcast with your host, Coach Bizzy. If you like what you heard, please subscribe to our channels and come back for more wisdom nuggets on how you may develop into a better leader and achieve greater levels of success. Leadership is the most critical skill. The world will always need leaders to lead others, deploy the next disruptive technology, or execute a business strategy. You may as well decide on counting yourself among the 21st century leaders. See you right here next time on the Leadership and Success Podcast with Coach BZ.