Love Your Work - How to Discover Your Life Purpose and Turn it Into a Career

Greetings everybody. Welcome to the Wednesday, May 6th, 2015 episode of Free Webinar Wednesdays. This is Eric Cook and I'm with WSI Internet Consulting where we work with businesses and organizations on helping them better understand and leverage the power of the internet as a strategic business tool. Good thing I'm not a speech therapist. You can learn more about me online and WSI at www.poweredbywsi.com. Unfortunately, my good friend and Free Webinar Wednesday buddy, Mr. Jeff Simpkins, is not able to join us today, but I will provide a brief little reminder. Those of you particularly in the community banking and financial services space that are looking for a creative and very well-versed and quite competent individual to provide you with some assistance in the bank consulting arena, particularly in operations, inefficiencies, I would strongly suggest touch base with Jeff. You can learn more about him over at communitybankconsulting.com or find him on LinkedIn, and you can track him down there, as well as myself, of course. So I am kind of flying solo today, but I have an awesome guest that's going to be coming on here in just a little bit to keep me company, as well as the rest of you folks that are joining us live. As a reminder, for those of you that might be new, we do record all Free Webinar Wednesday shows and make them available out at freewebinarwednesdays.com. So certainly be sure to check back to that site if you are interested in listening to a replay, or maybe you would like to go ahead and share this with a friend or a colleague or a coworker. And then we also appreciate and encourage and look forward to comments and questions from the audience, those of you that are listening live. Of course, if you're catching this on a replay, that's not possible. But if you're listening live and you're interested in asking a question or want to make a comment or an observation, By all means, please feel free to do so. You can do that with the question and answer area, which is in your control panel, likely over to the right-hand side of your screen. Just type it in there, and then while John's going through his stuff, I'll keep an eye on those, and when we have a break in the action, I'll go ahead and ask those for you. So without further ado, it is my pleasure to welcome John Tash to the show, and John actually comes to us— many of you May recall a couple weeks ago we had a show with some former Navy guys on a service called Quiver. We talked a little bit about Quiver, but we also talked about Bitcoin, and they gave us a little bit of macroeconomic theory to kind of support all that. And so they actually came out of the naval area; they were pilots, and that's where I got introduced. John as well because he also comes from a military career. So before I forget, John, thank you so much for your service to the country. Hopefully everybody that meets you says that, but I'm trying really hard to do that because what you do is certainly important. But I see your screen is up and your picture is there. Those of you that may know me or have seen me, looks like John and I go to the same barber. Nudge, nudge.

Right.

So John, Officially, welcome to Free Webinar Wednesdays. It's great to have you on the show, man.

Eric, it's, it's great to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

Cool. So I'm hoping— we kind of ran out of time when I talked with Brian and Dave over at Quiver. We just got one fighter pilot joke at the end, and that's all we got. So I'm hoping we get at least a little bit more of kind of some military history. I know you've also got some experience with the FBI, and you and I have had some pretty interesting conversations before then. I don't want to take it away from the meat of the presentation, but I know I personally like those kinds of stories, and I suspect most folks in the audience would as well. So with that, I'll kind of give you a gentle nudge to tell some stories. I dread it. But I see your screen. I know you've got some slides, so I will shut my mouth and let you open yours. And I'm looking forward to the next 60 minutes. So let's do this.

Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, thanks again for having me on, Eric. Yeah, you first came onto my radar screen. I believe you stumbled onto a podcast that I did with Brian, and it resembled a little bit of the webinar that he gave, him and Dave gave a couple weeks ago, but the emphasis was a little bit more on Brian's journey from the Navy to what he's currently doing now as the CEO of a high-tech company that you guys all know about. So Brian and I go way back into our, gosh, early 20s, I think. And we met right here in Jacksonville, Florida. And I was starting out as a navigator and weapons officer on board the P-3 Orion aircraft, which I will show you a picture of here in a couple moments. But so yeah, Brian and I go way back. And we became real good friends in the Navy through our flying days, and we've stayed in touch ever since. We kind of went separate ways after our squadron days. Brian stayed in the Navy, and I was coming up on the end of my commitment, and I decided that I needed a new adventure. And I, you know, I was in school at the time. I was in a master's program at Johns Hopkins in—

Maryland.

Washington, D.C. I was really interested in national security matters at the time, so I pursued a degree in that, a master's degree in that. I applied to the FBI. I went through all the tests. It took me like, gosh, a year and a half to get in from the time I went onto the website to the time I took the plunge into the FBI.

Wow.

FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, and from there I found myself— found my way into the counterterrorism program in the FBI. I got a couple of slides here, so let's check them out. Yeah, this aircraft that Brian and I flew, Brian was a pilot, so he obviously sat in the front, and you can see that little tiny window just to the—

Right there.

rear of the cockpit there on the side of the aircraft. That would have been my window. So I didn't get much of a view, but nonetheless, it was a lot of fun being a weapons officer and controlling the tactical aspect of the flight mission. So we did anti-submarine operations, and we also did a lot of overland flying. in Iraq and the North African desert, as well as other locales doing what we call surveillance and reconnaissance work. I'll let you kind of figure out what that is, but I can't really talk a whole lot more about what it is. It's what we call secret squirrel type stuff, but it was a great thing to do in our 20s, that's for sure.

Well, I can see your Your head kind of peeking through the window there, kind of spying on the bad guys. So you're— I can see that. Or maybe I'm just envisioning it, but yeah, paying attention to all the bad guys and making sure that they stay at bay. So nice job.

Yeah, thanks. And then like I said, that transition into the FBI. That's me, my moment of glory, getting my credentials from then FBI Director Mueller. Who's since moved on, but that was a cool moment for me as well. And then that brought me to San Francisco, California. Being that this is kind of a techie show, you guys should actually have a place of reverence in your heart. Being an agent in San Francisco was certainly interesting, as you can imagine. I actually had the opportunity to get to the very top floor of the Transamerica Building right there. Pretty awesome. Some real estate developer, you know, controls that floor, and he had a— gosh, a huge model of the Millennium Falcon from the Star Wars series hanging from the ceiling there, and he had a 360-degree view of the bay. Anyway, being in San Francisco was awesome. Yeah. And working counterterrorism was certainly an interesting career choice. Got to do a lot of interesting things in the FBI. That's me out at a crime scene, one of many, where we're just looking for stray bullets that were flying around through the air. That's one of the neighbors helping me because I think one of the bullets was actually inside his back right tire there. That was up in Sonoma County, which is just north of San Francisco. But I want to go back a few slides because I'm not really here to talk about all that today, as you guys know. My presentation today is about loving your work. I mentioned that I was an FBI agent, but I am no longer doing that. I left the FBI about 5 years ago— excuse me, about I was an FBI agent for 5 years, but I left the FBI about 8 months ago, and I transitioned into becoming a life coach, and in addition, I am a leadership speaker where I speak on college campuses and universities nationwide.

Okay.

So yeah, after 5 years of being a G-man, I left it all behind. I guess a lot of you guys might be wondering why, and I don't blame you. Most people react with what I call concerned curiosity when I tell them that I left the FBI to go into coaching. A few weeks ago, a woman even asked me why I quit, and I'll be the first to tell you, I did not quit. And I'll even let you guys in on a little secret that I don't tell many people. For me, being an FBI agent wasn't what I was meant to do. In fact, after a few years on the job, each day that went by was more and more unfulfilling for me. Something just didn't feel right. Now, don't get me wrong, being an FBI agent was fast-paced, it was exciting, it was Sometimes dangerous, sometimes stressful, and often challenging. But when I reflect on my days as an FBI agent, you know, it certainly was an incredible ride. I conducted high-speed surveillance operations, I arrested bad guys, some of those were actually girls too. I conducted search warrants, I interviewed hundreds of people, And I, like you saw there, I investigated crime scenes too. And aside from the bureaucracy and some of the politics and the paperwork that you don't see on television, being an FBI agent was pretty much everything you see in the movies and Hollywood to a certain extent, but we can get into that later in the Q&A portion because I'd like to share with you guys kind of how it really was. Getting back to it, I certainly don't regret my time in the FBI. I wouldn't be the person I am today had I not experienced everything I did. While I wasn't exactly living my life purpose, I learned a lot about the world and I got to experience things that most folks will never even come close to. No one can ever take that away from me. I'll always have that with me, and I think that's really cool and really special. So I guess I'll just say that if you aren't in a job right now that isn't doing it for you, don't let your time be wasted. There is always something to be learned from, for lack of better words, from where you are right now. I just want to emphasize that point. Back to my story. I had every reason to be happy. The thing is I really, deep down in my heart of hearts, wasn't. In the depths of my being, I knew that it just wasn't what I was supposed to do. As you can imagine, telling people what I did for a living raised a lot of eyebrows at cocktail parties. People were fascinated when they found themselves in the presence of a living, breathing FBI agent, but revealing my occupation to people outside of the workplace in social situations, it became an increasingly tedious affair for me, and it even got to the point where I once told someone I sold carpet for a living just to divert the conversation away from me, you know? And as you might imagine, folks aren't much fascinated by carpet. So the conversation quickly changed from that to something else. And it's not that I didn't want to talk about my job with my new acquaintances. It's just that I didn't feel like my job defined me as a person. And the last thing I really wanted to do outside of work was to talk about work. But that seemed weird to me. You know, I'd often find myself thinking, shouldn't I be excited about what I'm doing and want to share my enthusiasm with others? Shouldn't I wake up excited to go to work? Shouldn't I look forward to Mondays instead of dreading them? And these are, these are all questions I didn't have the answers to. So as I said, As time went by, each day felt more and more unsettling, but it was difficult to rationalize because I had worked so hard, so hard to get into the FBI, and after I got into the FBI, the learning curve was— gosh, it was probably steeper than what it was for me in the Navy, and that was certainly steep, learning all of the weapons systems and learning how to navigate an aircraft and do all the other stuff that I really can't talk about. No, I worked my butt off. I worked my tail off, but like I said, it just didn't feel like it was my calling. The thing was, so much of my life's worth was tethered to being an FBI agent, so admitting to the world that I was unfulfilled with the job was accompanied by a feeling of— let's just say it was unease. Like I said, I won't get into it any more than I have, that I wasn't living my life purpose. Even scarier, I didn't know what my life's purpose was. I remember this was probably about 2011. I was out to dinner with a fairly well-known entrepreneur in the online world named Tim Ferriss. It just so happened I came across his book. called The 4-Hour Workweek, and it was— I was just taken with the book. It just spoke to me and all the great ideas he poured into that book. I knew he was in San Francisco. I was in San Francisco, and I cold emailed him. Actually, I cold emailed his assistant. People with a little bit more clout have gatekeepers, and he had one. I wrote a nice personalized email and within about a week I found myself out to dinner with Tim. We had a great conversation and I just told him I was really fascinated with what he was doing. I was interested and he was equally fascinated with me and had a lot of questions about the FBI because it's not every day you meet somebody doing what I was doing. I told Tim, I said, Tim, I I think it's really fun and exciting what I'm doing, and I have every reason to be happy, but I'm really not. And Tim asked me, you know, what do you want to do? And I didn't have an answer. I had no idea. And that was frightening. And like I said, you know, I had every reason to be happy with my job. It was exciting. highly revered, and the pay was decent. Because I got to work national security matters working counterterrorism, I was helping keep my country safe from those who would wish to do us harm. I had done that in my previous job, too, where I was a flight officer. I alluded to it a little bit, but I conducted counterdrug missions in Central America and I tracked terrorists over North Africa and provided overland surveillance support to ground troops in Iraq. And I thought, you know, if serving my country was a prerequisite for being a good citizen, I'd say I paid my dues. And likewise, it's not that I couldn't do the job of being an FBI agent. I actually did it quite well, I think. You know, on paper I looked great. I received outstanding reviews. And I could go on about that, but I'll spare you all the self-congratulatory details. But just trust me when I say that I wasn't unhappy because I couldn't perform. But as each day went by, a little piece of my soul would evaporate with it, and I knew it was one that I wasn't going to be able to get back. And I'll be honest with you guys, with you all, it kind of gave me the blues. And it made me a bit angry too. I'd often, I'd often lament to myself, you know, saying something along the lines of, I'm a smart guy. Why can't I figure this out? And, you know, at the same time, I knew I had all these great outstanding qualities about myself. I was a high achiever, but still I was like, Man, was something wrong with me? I felt out of balance. It's not that I wasn't dysfunctional, but I knew something had to be done. I even looked into therapy, if you can believe it or not. But after learning more about therapy and what it was all about, I knew that that probably wasn't the right way to go. Again, I was functional. And then I stumbled onto the world of coaching. And I didn't really know a whole lot about coaching, life coaching before that. I kind of had this perception of it being kind of this new age hoo-ha kind of stuff that was certainly recently popular. I just didn't know how much merit was rooted in the industry. And being more of a government type, I didn't really come into contact with corporate coaches or anything like that, so I didn't really know What, what it was, but right from the beginning, the concept really intrigued me. You know what, while therapy is all about taking somebody from dysfunctional to functional, coaching is focused more on taking somebody from functional, where I was, to what they call optimal, where I wanted to be. So Without hesitation, I contacted a coach who seemed like a good fit for me in my area, and we quickly got to work on figuring it out, figuring out what I was supposed to do with my life. Not long into our coaching relationship, like I said, we got to work on figuring out who I was, and it's something I never really took the time to do. Really, through all of my, what was it, 35 years, I kind of had an idea of who I was, but really I think it was a manifestation of a lot of different things, some external to myself, some internal, but I really never really stopped and asked myself that question. Who among us really does? So through all of my introspection and reflection with my coach, I, I learned that my career choices had been influenced by what I thought would make my family proud, in addition to earning the respect of my friends and strangers alike. And while serving my country was very much important to me, I knew that the challenge of earning the title of FBI Special Agent was very much a factor. It really, it wasn't 100% for me, which sounds selfish when I say it out loud, but I came to realize that if something isn't 100% for you, you will never feel truly fulfilled. And that's the first secret of being fulfilled in your career. If your career doesn't embrace your values, those things that you revere as being most, excuse me, that you revere as being most important in life, it's likely that you won't be fulfilled. And when we know our values, when we're better able to prioritize, when we know our values, I should say, we are better able to prioritize, make decisions, and set goals. And this is why I think it's so important. There's a great quote on the screen by Steve Jobs, and it says, the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And I believe he delivered that at a commencement ceremony at Stanford University back around 2005. I think he had been diagnosed with cancer at that point. Now the skeptic would say, okay, that's easy for Steve Jobs to say. He was the head of Apple. He started the company, got fired, came back, turned it around, and the rest is history. And it's easy for somebody like Steve Jobs or Larry Ellison or who, you name it, these guys always saying, follow your heart, do what you love, find your passion. But the rest of us have to go on with our lives and put food on the table and everything else that goes along with being a responsible person. Let me go ahead a few slides here. I throw these numbers up on the screen because this is very telling about the US workforce population right now. This is from a 2013 Gallup poll, I believe, and as Gallup being a reputable A company that does research in these matters. It found that 52% of American workers are disengaged at work right now. 52% are disengaged at work. 18% are happy, and 30% are unhappy. The reason I share that with you is because, to me, that's a big deal. I'll get back to those numbers in a minute, but let's continue on with my story. This was my first aha moment when I came across the concept of values. See, for me, I realized that a value like justice, being an FBI agent, would have to be a prerequisite to being fully satisfied by a career in law enforcement. And while I do believe justice is important for a society to function properly, don't get me wrong, no one's saying that justice and the court system and holding people accountable for their actions and everything that goes with that is necessary in a society such as ours. It wouldn't have been something that was a 9 or a 10 on my list of values. Again, I'm not saying it's not important. I'm saying that— All of us have different values that we hold most dear and put a, put a premium on, so to speak. You know, these can be things like justice, fairness, fun, freedom, family, hope, joy, authenticity, fairness, structure.

Order. Creativity. Truth. Success.

So everyone's going to have different values, and everyone's going to rank them and have different levels of prioritization. So it all comes down to what you hold as being among your most important values. There's obviously a lot more to embracing your values when we talk about job satisfaction and fulfillment. Okay, I get that. But just think for a moment what your values are and how your current job may or may not be embracing your values. Many people think that they must prove their worth to the world in order to feel like they've accomplished something. I certainly had a case of that, and I pursued things that I thought were things that I had to pursue for a number of different reasons. Some of us come down with a case of, hey, look what I achieved syndrome, as I like to call it, or similarly, we may choose professions like law or accounting or medicine because we think that it's what we should pursue, whether it's because of family pressures or for financial security. Or because of anything else that is tied to external factors. In the coaching world, in my industry, we call that term limiting beliefs. We call these things limiting beliefs. These are the things that we believe about the world or ourselves that limit us in some way. I'll share a little bit more with you all since I pretty much told you my entire life story, so to speak. My limiting belief is that I'm not good enough. Believe it or not, that little inner critic in the back of my head, when it rears its ugly head, it's, I'm not good enough, or, you're not good enough. And to counter that, I will often pursue, or I did often pursue, Type A careers that would prove everybody wrong. But think about this. If a limiting belief is supposed to limit you, Wasn't my limiting belief actually serving me by pursuing all those worthy endeavors? Well, sort of. In one respect, I used it as a means to accomplish things, but it also prevented me from pursuing things that were for me. And when I say for me, that is— should be capitalized, bold, big letters— pursuits that were grounded in my values.

Okay.

You know, maybe your limiting belief might be similar to, you know, mine, where mine being is, I'm not good enough. And it's— maybe it's holding you back from leaving your job and pursuing something that deep in your heart you know you were always meant to do. But for some reason, your fear of failure is too much to overcome. Maybe your limiting belief is more nuanced than that. Maybe it's something like, you can't make a living as an artist, or women can't become race car drivers, or there's no money in teaching, or 90% of new businesses fail, or liberal arts degrees are a waste of money, or I'm too old to switch careers, I've got too much invested in this, and so on. I think you get my point. So these are the stories that we make up to protect about Excuse me, that we make up to protect ourselves from getting hurt. If we take a chance and fail, the limiting belief affirms our belief, right? In a way, limiting beliefs actually do serve us, but ultimately, in the end, they prevent us from becoming the people we really ought to become. On the subject of starting a small business, Of course, I get it. It's a risky endeavor. But if you believe in your ability to push through obstacles, persist in the face of adversity, adapt to changing circumstances, and resolve not to fail, then really, where's the risk? All right. Let's get back to the subject of pursuing work that is for you and you alone. Now don't get me wrong. Just because you pursue a career that is 100% for you It doesn't mean that you can't help people or society or make the world a better place. In fact, if any of you guys are fans of Ayn Rand, which I am, and The Fountainhead, I guess part of that kind of echoes in what I'll say next. I'd say that— I'd argue that if it were 100% for you, you would assuredly be making the world a better place because you would pour your soul into your work. You know, and I think if you do that, everyone benefits. Wow, right? But discovering who you are and what type of career embraces your values won't happen overnight. You have to reconnect with yourself. You have to figure out what you're good at and when you're at your best. You have to think about the times in your life when you've truly felt alive. You have to identify those things in your life which are most important. And again, I'll go back to your— I'll go back to values because I think they're so important. If you're looking for any practical resources that you might be able to find out there, these are 2 of my favorite. The one on the left, a lot of people probably know about if they're in the corporate world or if they've gone through an MBA. program. But I didn't stumble upon the StrengthsFinder, StrengthsFinder until about 3 years ago. And this book was really eye-opening for me because it comes from the perspective of, you know, we all have strengths, we all have weaknesses. But how much better would the world be, our workplace, our workforce, if we instead Number one, identified those strengths, and number two, embraced them and didn't try to continually try to improve upon our weaknesses. The book goes into this great example of Rudy Rudeiger that, if you've seen the movie, Rudy was a 5-foot-nothing, 100-and-nothing football player from the Midwest who had a dream of playing for Notre Dame, and it was a long, arduous process to get onto the team, and he never really made it onto the dress squad. It was only in the last game of the season of his senior year that he was able to dress for a game, and he played one play, and I think in the movie he has a tackle. I'm not sure how— excuse me, he tackled the quarterback. I'm not sure how it played out. in real life, but there may have been some sensationalism there. The point of the story in the book is Rudy, while he didn't waste his time trying to make that squad, he spent all those years working on his weaknesses and he never really embraced his strengths. And I think the point that was made is that if we take the time to figure out what we're good at and embrace it and not try to prove people wrong or continually try to work on those weaknesses, there can be much greater outcomes. So StrengthsFinders I would recommend to anybody who's looking to find out what they're really good at if they can't do it on their own. The other one is called Do What You Are on the right there, and this is a little— this is not as well known as StrengthsFinders, but Do What You Are is a great book to analyze who you are from the perspective of the MBTI. And while I am mindful that the academic community has— some in the academic community have kind of shunned the Type Indicator as being a reliable way to figure out personality type. I still love the heck out of MBTI. And if you really Do your diligence on finding out your type. Just as a little bit of backstory, there's 16 different personality types from the Jungian theory. This book is a real door opener. Again, it's not for everybody, but I found a lot of value in it and my clients find a lot of value in it. Same with StrengthsFinders— excuse me, StrengthsFinder 2.0.

Yeah.

I also like the concept of brainstorming. You know, whenever I used to hear the term brainstorming, I would be like, oh God, brainstorming. But brainstorming can be really fun and useful. Back when I actually was going through this process myself, my coach and I, we did an exercise called 100 Things, 100 Things. I've started to do this with my clients. She told me to write down 100 things that I could ever want in my life. Everything was fair game here. I started by listing 25 possible careers. I didn't hold back. If it seemed like it would be fun and fulfilling no matter what experience or talent was required for the job, I wrote it down. I put down occupations that included college professor, Radio host, stand-up comic, actor, counselor, writer, and even golf professional. Excuse me, golf professional. I love playing golf, but I thought that would just be fun because I love golf and I love teaching and helping people. This seemed like a real tedious exercise at first because it just seemed kind of silly just writing all these random things, but I was beginning to see the forest for the trees. Something to this. Next I wrote down my wish list for an ideal work environment. And again, I wrote down 25 ideal work environments because I found the work environment at the FBI highly distracting and sometimes chaotic given my personality type. And just a little bit of backstory, it was an open cubicle type of concept where there was— think Mad Men, if you will, if you're familiar with Mad Men, just the constant phones and chatter. through the halls and it just wasn't a good setup for me. But by identifying all these things, I was slowly figuring out who I wanted to be and how I wanted to work. After that, I listed 25 recreational and pleasure things that I wanted to have in my life or do at some point in the future. And I dreamed big. I dreamed really big. But at the end of it all, none of the things I listed were so grandiose that I didn't think they were possible. In reality, they were all possible. I'd just never really given myself the gift of taking the time to write them down. I learned that when all my life's encumbrances are removed, it's amazing what I can allow myself to dream. And for the last 25 wishes, I made it a miscellaneous list. Some of them included giving a TED Talk one day, which I still plan on doing, by the way. It's still on the list. Taking a creative writing class, being cast in a community play. And while nothing seemed connected on any of my lists, at the end of it all, I was amazed at what I discovered about who I was. But because this webinar is about you and not me, I'm going to save my life's purpose for the end. And I'll tell you that there were many other exercises that I did with my coach and now I do with my own clients to help them discover their true calling in life and how you can become closer to discovering who you truly are. Finding out what you are meant to do in life takes time and effort, but if you think about it, it's one of the best investments you can make. And I realize that we've only scratched the surface here. It's 41 minutes past the hour, and I do want to save time for questions about all the stuff I've presented, and I would like to talk a little bit about the FBI too, and and what my experiences were in terms of how it's portrayed in the media and Hollywood versus what I experienced. But if there's anything you should take away from today, it's that this webinar should serve as a launching pad for finding out why you're unfulfilled, discovering who you really are, and what your purpose is in life. When I have a client, in addition to the 100 things exercise, we do a lot of different things. I ask some deep questions like, what if you had all the money you would ever need? What would you still get out of bed for? Seriously, what would you do? I'll say this, going to the beach or watching television does not count. Leisure time, while it is important, is not the crux of the question. Some other questions might include, like I said before, I'm a broken record here, but I think determining what your top values are is so important to discovering what your purpose is. And like StrengthsFinder, I like the question, when are you at your best? When do you feel on, or some people like to call it, in the zone? What are your gifts and talents? What makes you different than most people? What would people say makes you, you? And I'll just touch on the Myers-Briggs a little bit. Are you an introvert or an extrovert? This one was big for me. Being an introvert, I get my energy by being alone with my thoughts, away from people and the distractions of life. And on the flip side of that, I'm drained after a couple of hours being around people and immersed in hectic environments. Introverts are usually content to let you do most of the talking. It's not that introverts are shy. It's just that most of them are internal processors as opposed to external processors. Conversely, extroverts, while there are more extroverts than introverts, they are energized through their interactions with other people. So if this is resonating with you, you might be what we call an external processor, and you usually do a lot of talking, and you become drained when you spend a large amount of time without any human interaction. So— Finding a career that would embrace your introversion or extroversion might be a great step for you. Again, that's just scratching the surface on type, but it kind of gets to the point of what type is all about and what it could do for you, I guess. I'm getting to the end here, but I want to just share a couple of quotes with you. The first comes from me. I'll just say that life is short. I know if you're young and you're listening to this, life seems long. The flip side of that is if you're getting to the end of your journey, it's probably seeming a little bit shorter, but it does go by fast. The last thing I want is for anybody to be the old man in the rocking chair who looks back on his life with regret.

Yeah.

There's a great quote from Warren Buffett, and he once said, quote, there comes a time when you ought to start doing what you want. Take a job you love. Take a job that you love. You will jump out of bed in the morning. I think you're out of your mind if you keep taking jobs that you don't like because you think it will look good on a resume. Isn't that a little like saving up sex for your old age? Again, I'll refer to Tim Ferriss when he— he has this term called the deferred life plan. You know, you can choose to be happy right now. You don't have to wait. So that's why I decided to make coaching my career. I know that it might seem like a bit of a paradox going from somebody who went through this, found a coach, and then became became a coach himself, but I'll tell you guys, I'm at my best when I'm helping people realize all the gifts they're able to offer this world. I'm a connector. I relate well with people, and I'm on when I help people cut through all the BS and really get to the heart of what is really going on. I have a natural ability to pull things out of those people— excuse me, pull those things out of people. So here it is, my life's purpose: to hear, see, feel, and know that I exist to embody possibility, hope, and optimization; to enjoy deep connections with others and help bring out their best; and to create a better world for myself and others. And you should notice that I don't define myself through my profession. I embody my life's purpose in all I do. If my life's purpose was to be a life coach, then what meaning would my life have outside of work? So again, I embody my life's purpose in all I do. And what were to happen if I would— what were to happen if I were to lose my voice or if no one ever hired me to be a speaker again on a college campus? Does that mean that my life would have no meaning?

Absolutely not.

So because I don't define my life's purpose through my career, I can live my purpose in all facets of life in conjunction with my profession. So that about wraps it up. That's my 47-minute monologue on—

Yeah. You've got extroverted Eric over here just biting his tongue because I want to interject on all these different points.

I know.

But I'm fighting the urge to do that. Again, if there's anybody on that has sat through a previous Free Webinar Wednesdays, you'll know I would be defined as the extrovert, and Jeff, my Free Webinar Wednesday partner, is very much the introvert. He's the cerebral one.

Yeah.

You know, kind of click and clack, where I'm the unfettered cheap humor guy and Jeff's the cerebral one that thinks and makes the really, really good observations. I stumble. You know, they say every once in a while a blind squirrel finds a nut.

Yeah. I'll just say this. If I could interject real quickly, I think introversion and extroversion certainly is misunderstood. I think a lot of people think that introversion equates with being shy, and it's not so much that. It's what I explained. It's that introverts get their energy by being more alone with their thoughts and being, like I said, internal processors, where you, Eric, are—

Yeah.

Probably drained by not being able to speak or being too alone sometimes with yourself, and then that kind of manifests itself through exhaustion, I would imagine.

Yeah, yeah, it does.

Yeah.

So, well, you know, what you talked about, and it's eerie how similar— not that I want to draw a correlation to the world of banking and the FBI, because I know that they're totally different. But I too had a revelation about 8 or 9 years ago that while I very easily could have stayed in banking— my father was a banker for 33 years— I developed a passion for technology and the internet and the way that the digital world was changing the way that we communicated and built relationships.

Mm-hmm.

I could have very easily stayed at the bank and evolved into CEO roles and done other stuff. And I chose to leave the bank on my own terms. And pursue my passion. And I still work a lot in the banking space because I still like it. I didn't leave because I didn't like it, but I didn't like what I was doing there. I felt like I could make an impact in other areas, and I've had the good fortune of working with community banks around the country doing what I love, what I really love doing while I was a banker. And so hearing you say that just is— it's almost like revisiting those whole decisions because it was scary as hell when I sat there and looked at I've got 401 and health insurance and paid vacation and bonus plans, and I'm going to leave all this to, quote, go build websites for a living? Are you nuts?

It sounds scary as hell.

Yeah, yeah, it was. It was.

I think a good question to ask is, what was it costing you to stay in that job? What were you missing out on by not making a change?

Yeah, and I think the biggest thing that's been gained out of that, because I still am very much communicating around my bankers and staying involved and feeling part of the industry, but the sense of freedom that I have now where I control my own destiny is— it's no surprise to anybody that's listening, the banking industry is one ripe with consolidation and mergers, and the bank that I used to work for was acquired and I survived, and now it's being acquired again, and I very well could have not survived that acquisition. Position, or I could have, but it would have required me to move. I now have total control of my destiny, and the only person that can fire me is myself. And that's what I gained. And, you know, but it was scary, and it's not been easy, but it's been a good ride. So I just wanted to share that because I thought— and I've not told you that story yet, and I think that's important because what you've done, you know, I did 8 years ago, 9 years ago, and it worked. For me as well. So one person did comment when they heard your life, kind of your, your, your, your story there, your passion or your life's purpose, wanted to know if you would be able to just summarize your life's purpose as basically making other people happy. Can it be boiled down that simplistically where you're just—

No, no.

Trying to help other people figure out, or is it deeper than that?

I would love to reduce it to something That's something like that, but it's really more than that because my premium values are— there are a few premium values for me, and the first one is possibility and potential. Again, I have that right on my website banner there because the reason why it's so important to me is I think a lot of people out there Most people out there have so many talents, gifts, and abilities that they're not using for whatever reason. I'm an idealist when it comes to that point. If I could embody a career that brings that out, I'm going to do it. I found my way into coaching. I could make people happy in any number of ways, but it really wouldn't truly be expressing my chief values, that of being, that of potential possibility. And again, optimization from a human perspective. There's a lot of ways you can embrace optimization, but for me it's more on a human level. There you go. Does that answer it?

Let's, let's, yeah, yeah, I think that makes sense. So let's say there's somebody out there in the audience who maybe doesn't know if they are or aren't doing what's there, because like yourself, maybe there's just a little bit of that kind of itch that they don't really know if they need to scratch it or not, but they're kind of curious. You know, what can somebody do to either on their own, or what should they do maybe to define if this is something that they really need to make a move on? And does it always involve a total career change, or can you take your passion and figure out a way to do what you love to do but make it part of the organization that you are in and not feel like you gotta cut the cord and jump and hope the parachute opens.

Absolutely. Well, I'll just make a disclaimer and say that most of the people who come to me are looking to leave their current job. They've kind of come to that point, but not everyone does. So on my podcast, you'll notice that I bring on a lot of entrepreneurs because I love entrepreneurs. I love the inspiration they bring to the table. I love bringing people on who are actually in the arena and doing it and making it happen on their own. I like to show what's worked and what hasn't worked. That's everything I do on the podcast. To that question, no, you don't have to leave your career. You don't have to leave your company. There are so many options, but I think in order— like any house is only as strong as its foundation, any chain is as strong as its weakest link. You need to figure out who you are first, and that's what I do with all my clients. We go through some deep values work to get to the heart of what makes them tick, what makes them come alive, when they're at their best, and then by finding out all those things, We can start to have a conversation about how their current role isn't embracing those values, and then we do investigative work to find out if there's something in that company or within that sector or industry that might be better suited for them. That way they can take that resume that they've already built up and use it as ammunition to make a transition. It's really going to depend on the individual, and I hate it when somebody says it— people say it depends, but it really does depend. Something I like to do though is to ask the question, okay, if you don't know what you want, list all the things that you know you don't want, and then write the complete opposite. A lot of times the answer lies right there. I know that's a simplistic way of putting it, but when you stop and think about all the things you don't want, it makes it very clear to determine what you actually do want and what you value. That's really what it's all about.

Yeah, I think that's— WSI is a global franchise, and when I made the decision I knew I didn't want basically, and this sounds bad, and I have lots of friends that are CEOs of publicly traded banks, but I said to myself I didn't want to be the CEO of a publicly traded bank.

Mm-hmm.

The environment had shifted, it had changed, and that just was not a comfortable position for me to be in, and I wanted to do something different. So that's really how I started. It's interesting that you say that because That helped me at least know what I wanted to avoid, and then, but very quickly I tried to make sure that I was focusing on what I wanted to do because we've also had guests on the show that have talked about if you focus on something that you don't want, ultimately that is the goal that becomes just because it's part of the thought process.

Uh-huh.

So I made the decision that I didn't want to be CEO of a publicly traded bank, but very quickly said, what What did I want to do? What were the things that I was passionate about? And that's where the love of technology and working with others and problem solving and kind of thinking of new ideas outside of the box really developed. And that's where I quickly maintained my focus. So I would encourage people not to focus too much on that, what you don't want to do. But it's important to maybe identify that and then get on with it as quickly as you can. I don't know. I don't know if you would agree or see that differently.

No, I agree. I was saying that's just like one thing you could try. There are certainly a lot of different things you can do, but that's just one of many questions you can ask yourself. It kind of— some people don't even know why they're frustrated, Eric. Some people are, and you could be frustrated and And unhappy or not fulfilled for a lot of different reasons. I see this a lot. I firmly believe that if a job isn't embracing your talents and abilities and it's causing you to continually try to work on those weaknesses in order to just get by or to succeed, there's going to be something going on there.

Yeah.

I think, and it happens, I mean, you probably know, it happens a lot out there, and I am certainly mindful that people have to put food on the table, clothes on their back, and money is a big deal, but it's not everything, and I try to tease that out of the clients, and when we realize how many options we truly do have, it can open a lot of doors.

Cool. Yeah, well, you've got your site up here, which I want to encourage folks if they're interested in learning more about you and what you do. You alluded to your podcast earlier. And so definitely, you know, get on that list. And you've got some good guests.

Yeah, I'm on iTunes. And yeah, I do an episode every couple of weeks. I have on entrepreneurs, small business owners who Some of them create their small businesses while they're still in their old job, some of them while doing it on the side, like a hybrid thing, and some people quit cold turkey and make the leap, kind of like I did. But yeah, these are all people who are making things happen and sharing their stories. I'm on iTunes, or you can come over to my website at johntasch.com.

Very cool.

Yeah, go ahead.

One other comment I want to share with you before we disconnect because I thought it was really cool. Barbara says, spot-on advice. Her Toastmasters talk last night was about the 5 years she spent as a computer programmer because she's told it was a great career path. She was a lousy programmer. When I got out and used my strength for another position, her life changed for the better! Exclamation point. So thank you, Barbara, for sharing that, as well as Mark. I will let you know your buddy Brian from the Navy has been posting comments and questions, but those will be served for an after show.

Oh goodness. Yeah, I tried to keep it PG today. We could have gone there, but this is serious stuff, man. This isn't Bitcoin or I don't know. What is this, like saving merchants money and all that blah blah?

Yeah, well, it was even more colorful than that, which is why we won't even But when I— when we follow up and have that conversation, let's just say I'm glad I had my telephone muted when I read those because I literally laughed out loud. So suffice to say, it sounded like you guys had some good times in the Navy together. So cool. Well, I think I stepped on you there real quick, but any other things that you want to say before we wrap this up, and then we'll bring the show to a close?

No, I mean, if you guys are interested in some of those resources I mentioned, I do have a resources page. And full disclosure, I do get an affiliate affiliate commission. So if you don't, if you're uncomfortable with that, just go to Amazon and buy them yourself. But I recommend, I recommend some of these resources. So check them out, see what I got on my site, and I hope you all find your purpose in life and wake up for work that you can't wait to do.

Yep, absolutely. So cool. Well, this has been really good. I'm glad we were able to connect and get together. This has been a really good show. So Next week, we are likely not going to have a show. I'm still kind of nailing down travel plans, so keep an eye on our Facebook page. We will also publish information through our newsletter as well. So if we do not have a show next week, I know we are back the week after that and have a guest booked, so we'll provide that announcement when it's ready. But we will get the recording taken care of and up on the site here shortly, so you Come back and listen to this. Share it with a friend or a colleague. And appreciate everybody's participation and loyalty to Free Webinar Wednesdays. So with that, have a great week everyone, and we will see you online at freewebinarwednesdays.com. Take care everybody. Bye-bye. Bye.