HOW TO BUILD A BUSINESS AROUND YOUR PASSION

I want to talk with you about a word, and that word is the word identity. Okay? I'm going to put this on the board here because to me, it's really powerful that you understand this word right here, identity. Now, what is identity? Identity is simply the labels that you and I place on each other. Right? Okay. It's the labels that we place on each other. And these labels, many times can form our identity. So let me give you an example. So for many years, I was a pastor of a church, okay? And it was more than just my vocation. It actually was the label that people placed on me. And they actually would call me Pastor Chad. So when I would look in the mirror or when somebody asked me what I did, the first thing out of my mouth was, well, I was a pastor. Well, what happened was, because I placed that label upon myself, I began finding ownership in that. So I began thinking like a pastor, I began talking like a pastor, I began acting like a pastor, I began in public, I started doing things like a pastor. Why? Because that label was placed upon me. Now, labels can be both positive and. And negative. Okay? Labels can be both positive and negative. They're positive when they serve you, but they're negative when they pull you down. So what happened is after about 19 years, three months of being a pastor, I went through some pretty big life changes. I actually went through a divorce and I stopped being a pastor. They don't like you to be divorced in a pastor. So I lost my job. But I didn't only lose my job, but I lost this thing right here called identity. I lost my identity. Why? Because identity is a label that I placed upon myself. And because I placed this label upon myself. Well, when the job went away, the title went away, therefore, the identity went away. And so for so many years, I just sort of was lost. So maybe many of you are like that right now in your own career. You're sort of lost. Maybe you're in a 9 to 5 job and you don't love it. Maybe you're in a relationship and you don't love it. Maybe you're in between careers and you really don't know what to do, and you're trying to build a business. So what you do many times is you just go and see what other people are doing and how they're making money, and you try to mimic it. And once you find out, it just doesn't resonate with you. And so what I want to do is I want to be able to help you figure out how to build a business around this thing called identity. But I want to show you some stuff here that I think is really, really, really important. So what I want to show you is that if you're not 100% certain about your identity, then life is going to suck, okay? And so let me just show you. What happened to me was after I lost my job being a pastor, my identity went down to the tank, okay? I really started struggling with everything. So I was depressed, I was frustrated, I was aggravated. I didn't like who I was in the mirror, and anything that I touched used to turn to gold. Now it's turned into coal, okay? And the reason is because my identity was messed up. And so what I had to learn was I had to learn how to make a massive shift in my mind so my identity was clear. And so here's what I found out. So, Russell Brunson, okay, the founder of ClickFunnels, named me a ClickFunnels Top 30 designer a little bit more than 18 months ago. And when he did that, okay, I was both happy and sad. I was happy because, man, it means I'm one of the best marketers designers in the world. But I was sad because I hated to build funnels, okay? And I was really nervous that my identity was going to shift from being a pastor to being a funnel designer, because I didn't like being a funnel designer. I loved being a pastor. I didn't love being a funnel designer. I'm like, oh, my gosh, is my entire future I locked into sitting behind a computer screen. And so when I was in Boise, Idaho, he gave me this award for being a top 30 designer. I went back in my Airbnb. I was sort of a little frustrated and depressed, and I did a little exercise that I want to show you guys on the screen here that I want you to do in order to figure out what your identity was. Because here's what I knew. There were two parts of identity. One side is what we call do. Okay? The other side is am. Okay, do and am. What I learned was that I'm a human being, not a human doing. My identity was really shattered until I understood that there was a separation. And what I had to understand was that what I did for a living was simply the vehicle that I used to make money, but it wasn't necessarily who I was. Are you with me? It was the vehicle that I used to make money, not necessarily who I was. So I had to figure out the am part. So how did I figure out the amp part? So if I can do Anything to make a living. Okay. And if I fail, then it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm a failure. It just means that what I did is a failure. Then what can I do to build this site? Okay. So this site is easy to figure out how to make money. But what we want to do is we want these two things to be in parallel. So a little exercise that I did in Boise, Idaho. I'm going to put this on the screen was I went and I took a yellow notepad and I created a little chart that looks something like this. Okay. And on this side, I just simply put R for resume. Okay. In the middle, I put T for task. Okay. And then here I just put the number five. And I'll show you. And what I did was I literally forced myself to go back and make a list of everything that I've ever been paid to do in my life. Every job that I had, every business that I had. I literally wrote it down right here. And then I did the painstakingly and time consuming task of figuring out all the tasks that I did in each of these jobs. So this one here was about 13, 14, 15 things. And this right here ended up being like 3 or 400. Actually took several pages of a yellow. Of a yellow pad. Right. Of all the tasks that I had ever done. And then what I did was I took a marker and I went back through the task and I just simply highlighted, okay, all the things that I love to do. And I found about 30 of the things that I had done that I really love to do. And then I came over here to my top five, and I asked myself the question. If somebody was to pay me 250k a year and I can only do 5 things, which 5 things would I do? And so one of them was speaking. So I brought. Speaking. I just brought it over here. The other one was teaching. Okay. The other one was strategy. The other one was inspiring. And the other one was video and film. So what I did in this exercise, trying to figure out my identity, was I wrote down all. Everything I've been paid for. I made a list of all the tasks, several hundred of them, and then I brought five. I brought my top five over. And what I learned was, at first I was really upset because these five things on the right hand side, I'm like, shoot, those are the things that I did when I was a pastor. Oh, my gosh, how terrible is life, Right? I can't go back and be a pastor. And I just thought my life was over. And then Something clicked and I said, well, wait a second. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I can do. As long as I'm speaking and teaching and strategizing and inspiring and doing video film, I can do that in any industry. In any industry. And that's when it clicked that Pastor was no longer who I was, but pastor was what I did. So now watch me. So if you come back to the board here, what I had to do is I had to take pastor from this category and I had to move it over to this category and tell and realize that it was only the vehicle that I was using to make money. But speaking, teaching, strategy, inspiring and film, it isn't what I did. It was who I was. So I am a speaker, I am a teacher, I am a strategist. I. I am an inspiration. And I love doing video and film. This is who I was. So when I could take what my top five and I can move it to this category, okay, then what I could do is I could build a career, okay? I could take these five right here. I could move into this category and I could build a career based on who I was, okay? And as long as I was doing these things, it didn't matter what I was doing. If I was doing multi level marketing, as long as I was speaking teaching strategies, that's fine. And this is how I came up with my business that I'm doing right now. I realized that, boy, I know how to launch businesses. I know a lot about marketing, and I could speak marketing, teach marketing, strategize marketing, inspire people through marketing and use video and film just like I'm doing right now with marketing. And if I can do that, then what I could honestly do is I could do something based upon who I was. And the nice thing is, if this coaching business fails, and it doesn't matter if it fails because it's just what I do for a living. I'm never going to stop speaking, I'm never going to stop teaching. I'm never going to stop strategizing. I may not do it in the coaching world, I may do it in another world, but that's who I am, okay? Not necessarily what I do. So here's the power of that. The power of that is so many of you guys have done things and you failed at it. And what you've done is you've taken on the label of failure, okay? You've placed failure upon yourself. You look at the mirror and you believe that you're a failure. Maybe it's in a marriage and you failed in A marriage. And you've taken that on. Maybe you've done something terrible, okay, in that marriage. Maybe you had an affair, or maybe, you know, you were into pornography, or maybe, you know, you were just, you know, maybe you were. You were violent, or maybe you were a terrible dad or terrible mom or whatever. Maybe you're the reason why your marriage failed. And you've taken that failure and you place it upon yourself. And. And everybody around you is placed that upon yourself. And what I'm telling you, you gotta shed that, because that's not who you are. Failure is never a person. Failure is simply an event. And you have to put the event category over in the do. It's just a vehicle. And you can put that vehicle in the junkyard, you can smash that thing, you can destroy it, and you can move on to the next. But who you are is something that God has created you to be. Who you are is inside of you. What is your top five? So the exercise that I want you to do before we move on is, is I want you to take some time and I want you to grab a notepad, and I want you to look at this little diagram right here. And I want you to do this. I want you to figure out what is the resume, what is everything you've ever been paid to do, and then take time to literally do every task. Make this 200, 300, 400 things that you've done on the show. I'm talking about, you took out trash. You cleaned the bathrooms, you washed the water fountains, you made copies, you made coffee, you greeted people. You. You did accounts receivable, whatever it is. Figure out everything that you've done in these jobs, and then highlight as many of those as you want. That said, I really like these. And then take your top five, force yourself to move your top five. And what you're going to find out is these top five will really be who you are, not necessarily what you do. Another little thing that you could do, I'll put this down in the resources of the link, is I want you to buy the book called Strength Finders 2.0. Okay. Strength Finder 2.0. It's an incredible book. And what it does is it allows you to find your top five, the top five strengths that you have as a leader. They say that you have 34 potential gifts as a leader. It helps you hone in on your top five gifts. And what you can do is you can use those to be able to learn exactly what you're good at in the next video. I'M going to show you how to use those top five five and build what we call a Kazone. So watch this, do this exercise and when you're done, we'll see you on the next video.