Diligence

Thank you, Dave. I'll get it. Appreciate it. Good morning. I am really, really excited to be here today and to talk to you about a topic that I have a little bit of experience with, and it's diligence. You know, all of us have some experience with diligence. Whether we're good at it or not is a question, right? All of us are still here, so we've gone through a lot of things, and diligence is required in order to do that. I'm gonna tell you a little bit of a story today. I gotta figure out how my clicker works. I usually like to find a Bible verse that I like to kind of center my thoughts around when I'm trying to develop a talk for this group. I've spoken here now, goodness, for 8 years off and on. 100 times. I've spoken in a ripped t-shirt. I've spoken in a suit. I've spoken a lot of different things. But this is the verse that I chose today. It's Proverbs 12:17, "Whoever is slothful will not roast his game, but the diligent man will get precious wealth." Will you join me in prayer, please? Father God, thanks for today and for this time together and for the opportunity that you give us all the time to be diligent in our work, in our life, in our love, and in our service to you and to our fellow man. Lord, as we go through today, I hope that the words I would speak would be the words that you would have me give, and that they would land on willing ears that are just the right ears at just the right willingness at just the right time in order to make a powerful impact in the lives that we'll talk to today. Lord, as we go from here today, I hope that we would all be encouraged, enlightened, and inspired to do your work with your will and to have a better impact on everyone. In your name we pray, amen. So diligence. You know, the fact is that I said everybody is diligent and nobody balked at that. No one said, well, no, I'm not. I'm not diligent. And yet some of us here today don't have the results we're looking for because we weren't diligent. You see, you can be diligent for good or for bad, just like anything else. The world doesn't care. The world really doesn't care what you're working on. And that's something I've discovered recently. So I hope to share that with you. That's a picture of me, and it's not coming out real well because of the light, but it'll be great on the, on the video that we'll develop. So if you want to watch this later on, as you can see on the left, on your left, that's about a year prior. It's actually about a year ago today. And then on the right is a picture of me wearing the exact same clothes and a little bit different. And I did that with a lot of help from a lot of people, but with the most help from what I'll talk to you about today, 3 little things. 3 things I did differently, and I promise you I'll tie all of this back to how it can help you in what you're looking for today, and that what I presume is an end to your job search, a successful end, because we can just quit looking right now. And unfortunately, some of you have. I mean, I realize I'm in a room full of quitters. And we know who you are. I mean, we're all quitters, right? That's right. We've all quit, right? But that doesn't mean you're permanently a quitter, right? So I can tell you, I lost 30 pounds, 40 pounds many, many, many times in my life. This is 70, and I'm not done yet. When I bought this suit after losing some weight, it was tight and it's gotta go now, but I'm happy about that. But there's 3 things that I wanna talk to you about today that I did to get those results and then we'll tie them back into how they can be 3 things or 1 thing or 2 thing. I will tell you that it's all one thing when it's all said and done. But the first thing I did was I made a decision. I decided, and my decision was that I didn't care anymore. I was indifferent. There's a difference between, you know, they say the opposite of love is hate. That's not true. It's indifference. Okay? For a long time, I hated who I was, which is close to loving who I was. Very, very close. Love and hate are very, very close. But one day I woke up and I decided I didn't care anymore. That person had to die. I didn't love that person anymore. I didn't care about that person anymore. I didn't care what their goals and aspirations were. That wasn't who I wanted to be. And I became very indifferent about it. And I remember the day distinctly. My wife and I had been going back and forth on diets and things like that, and we— I had finally said, "Look, the only diet that ever has worked for me is the Atkins diet." That's a low-carb diet for for what it's worth. And that's the only one that's ever worked for me because it allows me to eat basically anything I want as long as it's on the diet plan. And I like to eat a lot. That's how I ended up looking like that, right? I like to eat a lot and I like to eat often. And I like to eat whenever I feel like eating. And I know that if I go on a diet, the first thing I'm gonna do is say, "I have the right to do whatever I wanna do. I'm a free person. You can't tell me what to do, you." It's me, but you know, what sense does that make, right? So we were sitting there and we had gone on the Atkins diet and it just doesn't work for her. It's terrible for her. She said, first of all, she's not real big on protein. But we trying to work together. And she said, "Well, I can't do this anymore." And every other time we'd gone together and said, "Okay, well then." And finally I said, "I don't care. I'm doing this. I don't care. I don't care what happens. You tell me that it's bad for my health because it's— there's not enough—" You're not getting your— you're not getting the right balance of vegetables and all that and you need fruits and all that. I don't care. Guess what? Being 70 pounds overweight's not healthy too. So don't tell me about how I'm gonna drive up my cholesterol and all that. I don't care. I'm done. You have to become indifferent to the problem. I believe, I believe. Now I gotta tell you, this is what's worked for me. It may not work for you. I don't know the secret to success. I know my secret to success. Number 2. I chose a course of action. I became indifferent to my old self and I chose a course of action. A friend of mine, Steve Seabold, if you haven't read this book, "You Wanna Lose Some Weight?" it's a great book, I will tell you that. You can download it probably for free. I think he has it all over the internet, but you can buy it at Amazon too. So here's the quote. It's a simple equation. Eat fewer calories than you burn and you'll lose weight. But actually, it works both ways. If you— if you eat less than you burn, you'll lose weight. It's very simple. Not easy, but it's simple. In your job search, it's very simple. If you didn't get the answer today you needed, what do you need to do tomorrow? Have more opportunities gets the answer you needed. You need to make more calls, make more networking arrangements, line up more, more appointments, search more on LinkedIn. You've got to do the things you've got to do, whatever's working for you to get you closer. Because here's the thing, you're closer than you think. That was the one thing that blew my mind about losing weight. One day I walked out of my bedroom and, and my pants were falling down and they fit yesterday. Now, did they really? No. But I became aware that day. I became aware that day. And so what you're doing, something's working. Something's working. Coming here is working, I can promise you that. Because guess what? Most of the faces I see here today aren't faces I've seen here before except for Ship's Crew, which means all those faces I saw here before, they've done one of two things. Either been successful or quit. But it's working, okay? I chose a very simple plan for me. I changed my diet and my exercise, both together. You know, Benjamin Franklin said, "A penny saved is a penny earned." My theory is if it's a penny that you earned and then you saved it, you've earned two. Think about that one for a while. I wanted it to be simple. And so for me, it was. I'm gonna eat chicken or beef or salad or a green vegetable. At breakfast, I'm gonna have 3 eggs with some ham, bacon, or sausage. Over and over and over and over and over again. That's what I'm gonna do. I'm not gonna vary. I'm not gonna change. 'Cause here's the thing I know. If I stay away from those high-calorie items— see, the interesting thing about beef and chicken and fish and salad and green vegetables is they're all low calorie. They're, they're low carb and for the most part, for the bulk, low calorie. If I stay away from those things and I exercise, I can't help but lose weight. I have no choice. And see, this is the thing, remember I said that person had to die? I'm becoming the different person. See, it wasn't hard for me. I wasn't on a diet. I was someone who ate these things. I was someone who ate salad every day for lunch. I was someone who woke up every morning and cooked 3 eggs and some form of bacon, ham, sausage, some breakfast meat. Sometimes I scrambled them, sometimes I fried them, but I did the same thing every single day because I could predict what would happen. And see, that's what you've gotta do. You gotta get to the point where you can predict. Number 3, I did take a diet supplement. I'm not here to sell it today, although if you're looking for it, I guess I could figure out how to sell it. I don't, but I could. I took a diet supplement called Plexus Slim. Does it work? I don't know. I guess it does. I lost 70 pounds. Like I said, over and over and over again. Do the same thing over and over and over again. And as long as it works a little, over a period of time it'll work a lot. And the compounding effect is staggering. I will tell you right now, every single one of you is already selling yourself short. Because see, the compounding effect of your job search is, "I didn't get a job today." It doesn't matter if you had a good meeting, it doesn't matter if you had a great networking event, it doesn't matter if you came to this. At the end of the day, if you didn't get hired today, in the back of your mind you're thinking, "I didn't have a job today." You've got to change the focus. See, I didn't sit there and go, "I didn't lose 70 pounds today." Guess what? I've got another 30 or 40 to go. I did say, "I'll do these things." You have to be willing to do what it takes. You don't have to do it all, but you have to be willing to do it all. So, my— this is a picture of my son and I running in an event in 2000— I guess this was '14. Like I said, I've lost a lot of weight over my lifetime. As you can see, I was a specimen for sure. What kind of specimen? But I was still large. This is a half marathon, 13.1 miles. I will never forget finishing that. My son and I running our first half marathon together. The poor kid, as you can see, he's not exactly trim, but we finished. This is what it led us to last Sunday. My son and I in New Orleans finished the New Orleans Marathon, 26 miles, 385 yards. I gotta tell you, on the way home I measured 26.2 miles in the car. It took us 21 minutes to drive at 73 miles an hour. It's a long way. I gotta— it's a long way. But there we are at the finish line, and I believe your job isn't to decide how you will achieve what you want. Your job is to decide what you wish to achieve. Leave the how to the journey. And you just might find up that the— that you end up beyond the destination you set for yourself. See, I didn't plan on running a marathon. My son and I ran the Soldier Half Marathon in Columbus last year in October, and when we came home, he didn't know it, but I went online and I found a marathon. I registered for it because I knew I had to set the next goal or I'd start to go backwards. You're either growing or dying. So how does this tie back into your job search? What will you decide to do today that will make the difference? What will you decide that will make the difference? See, if you don't have the results you want right now, you're a decision away from the result you want and some time. That's all there is. Because I'm a firm believer we can do anything we want to. If you go back to that first picture of me, That man shouldn't run a marathon. That man isn't here today. I decided to be somebody different. Will you decide to not be a job seeker, but a job finder? Will you decide to be not a job seeker, but a job getter? Better yet, will you decide not to be a job seeker, but a problem solver? For the ideal people who need the ideal person, and that's you. What will you decide today? I hope you'll decide something great. I know you can because anyone can. Thanks for your time this morning.