Why "Follow Your Passion" Is Holding You Back | The Truth About Success

If you stay balanced forever, what does that mean? Nothing ever changes. Another word for balance is mediocrity. So if you want to just have, you know, a medium mediocrity life all the time, stay balanced.

Hello everybody. And I'm here with my son and right hand man for Good Lord, over 30 years, Adam. Hello, Adam.

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening.

Actually it's longer than that because you, at five years old you helped, you're my right hand man in moving from North Carolina, Atlanta up to North Carolina in the beginning of time, whenever that was. But so Adam has been right at my side the whole time. So hopefully y' all will enjoy it because it won't be the first time Adam has heard this, but I thought that Adam has great insight on all of these things. And since I want to talk about setting yourself up for success, Adam has taken a lot of these principles and applied them in various areas of his life and had some great achievements and so got his own athletic clothing line, that's Silverback Crew, that's known around the world. He's a two time North Carolina strongman champion, three times North Carolina strong champion. I was shorting him.

I'll take, I'll take every accomplishment I can get. Yeah.

And there was 10 years in between two of those. So a lot of things, you know, in our financial services company, there was a time in the 90s where he was the number one in the entire company out of about 100,000 people. And so he's, he's tasted success at the highest level and he's got, as a result, he's got a lot of friends are the top of their professions and all kind of different walks of life. And so he's uniquely got unique insight. And two, setting yourself up for success. I want to talk about setting yourself up for success. And here's the thing, there's no easy answers. You've got to be your own best self coach and you've got to come to your own conclusion. You can't listen to me and Adam give our opinion on this subject or that subject and just go down the road. You're going to be debating these things in your own mind. Because a lot of these things are kind of paradoxical. It's all this, but then sometimes it's that it's like my youngest son, Brian, as he grew up, he'd always be asking questions and it came down to the answer was always, well, it depends which he never wanted to hear. You know, you want absolute things, but you gotta learn how to think your Way through things, folks, because life is complicated. That's why I have the trouble with all the fake experts and the experts who write the books with great authority, teach and preach, and they never done anything, you know, and so how can you know the real complexity of doing things when you've never actually figured that stuff on the. On the run. So let's talk about. We're going to talk about three things real quick. We won't, you know, we're going to just have some fun and give some ideas for you to think about. Follow your path. You know, the first there's kind of. You say it, they're lies. They're not really lies. They're kind of not the whole truth. But anyway, follow your passion, young man. You know, you got to find your passion with. With no thought to whether or not you can actually make any money doing it. What the odds of success? Should it be a hobby or should it be your actual occupation? Follow your passion. What you can get most excited about, and the truth of it is that in life you wind up finding a way. Most of the time you find a way in life where you can make some money and you wind up doing a lot of it and you wind up getting good at it. And. And depending on the activity, a lot of times you can find yourself enjoying something you never thought you would wind up doing, but you just got good at it. And it's fun to be good. People enjoy things they are good at. And when I, Adam, as I was coming up, I don't know if I've ever told you about this, but your grandmother used to get mad at me because I never really thought about what I wanted to do with my life. But I was very clear of what I didn't want to do, which was pretty much the job of everybody I saw. And I guess I was griping. I had a history of griping around the house, like, man, what a boring job that would be to do that the rest of your life. Can you imagine somebody does that for a living? You know, and eventually she wound up exploding at me. Well, you got to figure out something to do. You know, sooner or later you get me all critical of other people. You got to find something to do. And anyway, but the deal is, as you come up, you gotta get, you know, you gotta find some way to get through life. And it takes money. You know, life is the money game. And so all of these setting yourself up for success in your opinions have to be made in relationship to can I survive? Because we all. Everybody wants to Be a million dollar earner for the first 15 minutes. But eventually, you know, you got to be able to make a living. And so, you know, I thought I wanted to be in the arts. I couldn't find a career path, anyone, a role model to follow in art and photography, in painting and photography. So I went in and studied architecture. And when I found out what a long road that was, you have to be about 40 years old before you could make any money and have any independence. I said, no, I got to switch. So I went into building construction, built 100 houses in four years. I got good at it and I enjoyed it. Unfortunately, it's an up and down industry and the, you know, we went through a thing where the. All of a sudden I was basically out on the street. You know, there was, we couldn't sell houses, so I, you know, there was no money for me to stay in that. And I swapped industry. But I started, you know, because of that. I went into food stamps for a year. I'm going to take a year off. I'm going to investigate everything, I'm going to find an industry. And that turned out well. But during that transition, it was very, very tough. And I wasn't waking up every day saying, what do I, you know, Mr. Pollyanna, do? Do I really want to do with my life? Well, I would have rather done painting and photography and stuff like that, but that was not an option. So I had to find an option that would be acceptable. And so I found an ad in the paper. Adam, I don't know if I've ever told you this either. It said, small little ad in the paper, said financial sales, $50,000 a year. And I said, okay, sign me up. That's what I'm looking for. And so that's how I got going in the financial services thing. Unfortunately, it was commission. And so if you didn't sell anything because you were no good, then you starved to death, which is a little tough. Where I had all of y' all at home looking for food. And so a lot of stress in the early years. But you got the framework is you got to find something you could do to make a living to get going. And then as you get that momentum, then you can move more in the direction of things where, you know, I really inspired to do this, I'm really more motivated to do this, that and the other. But in the beginning, you better find something that you can make money at so you can have your own independence. The main thing is I loved having my own financial independence and not Having anybody as a boss. And so that was the main thing that motivated me. And you go from that, finding a way to do that to other things. And now, you know, I paint all the time. I've got a photography business. I've got an art business. I've got, you know, several, you know, I do the podcasting, which I enjoy, meeting and talking with other high achievers. And, you know, I live in Aspen. I live in Palm Beach. I'm able to do a lot of things I love to do, but in the beginning, I had to make a living and I had to get good at it. And so, Adam, the thing is, you know, what insight do you have about following your passion in terms of relating to finding what you're going to do with your life?

Well, there's a lot of people that, like you said, get involved with things they're interested in because that's where they want. That's where their main interests are. That's where they want to spend most of their time. So they want to try to figure out a way on how they can make money doing that. Where it's, you know, guys that are really into cars end up becoming mechanics, not necessarily because they want to become mechanics, because they're so passionate about their hobbies in that arena. You know, a lot. I know a lot of guys that race, drag cars and things like that, they not necessarily want to be mechanics for other people, but the fact they can be around that all the time and get better at it, it ends up becoming a passion. They follow they making money as a result of getting better at what they're interested in to start with. And there's a lot of people that do the same thing in fitness. You know, they learn a few things, get in better shape, and then they want to try to coach other people on how to lose a little weight here or there, but. And then it becomes a passion of them because the way they feel about themselves changing their lifestyle up and just grows. It can grow into something from there. So whatever your interests are, you start following those. Like you said, anything you start getting good at, you tend to enjoy more. And the more you enjoy it, the more you want to get better at it. And the better you get, the, you know, the more passionate you become at it. Because somebody that's a real champion will never want to just get good at something. Once they start getting a little good, a little bit better at something, they want to be the best at it, and they want to strive to be the best in the world at it. I would think, and they might not be able to be the best in the world, but they could be the best that they could be at it, whatever that is. So. And if they could make money doing that, then that's exciting for them, that's exciting place to spend their time and their energy.

You know, you could give all kind of examples of guys, you know, that had an interest in, you know, wrestling, firearm, you know, firearms. You know, Q is number one firearm maker in the world. You know, Kevin and the number one wrestler, Braun Strowman. And you know, he, he was a buddy you met down in North Carolina going to the strongman competitions out of Charlotte. Known him for how many years now?

At least 15.

Yeah, he's the number, number one WWE guy forever. And so, and now he's got his own TV show, reality TV show, the Food Network and all you can eat, I'll order everything in the menu or something where he goes in. And so. And the thing is, you know, even cars, you know, if it's what, whatever it is you're interested in, if you're really motivated to move up, you can take it big time and you could do more with it and you could expand to other outlets, take over, you have your own place open up other places go into other states. And we saw that, you know, you know, we're familiar with the, you know, since you were 11, 12, 13 years old, you've been going to the gym and dragging me along with you. And as a result, you know, we're very familiar with the gym business and all the, all the pitfalls of that. However, you have a guy like Alec Hermosi, Alex Hermosi took the gym business and turned it into, you know, he, he built a system where you could revolutionize the thing, open up outlets, sell that system, teach it to others. And then he's turned it into a, you know, he's a business guru now and got a, you know, 60,000 or more facility, square foot facility out of Vegas. He's got people coming in and doing $5,000, hundreds of people on $5,000 ticket, weekly visits going in and out of there all the time. And it's just, he just took it big time. And you could take like we had on the locker room on our big hitter community, we're doing this on a Monday afternoon. We just got off of our big hitter community million dollar locker room call a little while ago and we had Frances Averitt on and she, at her early part of her career she had in middle Georgia, had a farm business that Turned into a flower business, that she turned it into a thing where they had big, big houses, they were shipping tens of thousands of flower baskets and flower things to stores all over the southeast out of that little, little thing. Until her husband lost his health. They were, they were probably been nationwide, you know, and so the, you could take any of these business big time. But when you get started, you need to learn how to make a living and get your feet started, get it underneath you. And so any other comment on that? Then let's go to, let's move on.

All right. Yeah, I just, you know, anything you're excited about doing, you want to put more energy into. And if you can put a lot of energy into it and make money as a result, you know, that's the ultimate dream there. Especially something you can, where you, where you feel like going to work every day is not going to work, but it's something you enjoy doing.

Yeah. And I've always told people that, you know, you, you go to greatness by doing the extras and you're more likely to do the extras if it's, if it's an activity you really enjoy. Yeah. Because you're going to be doing the extras and you're not even noticing most of the time. So let's move on. Another thing you see, so you got to make up your mind about, you know, your passion, following your passion. The other thing is life, you know, balance of life. You know, you know, the big lie is balance leads to success. You know, we even have that in our product lines, you know, in our company where we have all kind of product lines and financial services and they, it's the balance versus the unbalanced. And I won't get into the pros and cons here, but this seems to be a debate in life and in business and everything else. It's like they, I'll say this, it seems that it comes down to people get off track, we could beat this to death. Make up your own mind. But most people, once they start thinking about balance, they're more worried about balance than winning. And I think balance is great as long as you're winning. Because if you're winning, you can always regroup and you can always steer the ship back over to put more balance in your life. But when you're trying to get your airplane off the ground, you're the pilot of a 7:47, you know, you don't have your, your, your three year old daughter on your lap, tickling her and playing with her while you're trying, you know, You're. You're piloting a plane on the Runway, and you're ready on takeoff. No, no, no, no. Take her to the back. You know, if her mother's there, she goes to her. I don't care if she's crying, you know, I don't care if she wants to be up here with daddy, you know, get her out of here. I got, you know, all these. You know, I've got something to do here. Then you can bring her up here in 10, 15, 20 minutes or something. But right now, you know, there's certain timing in life where priorities have got to take over if you're going to be in a position of responsibility. And so my thing is that people, as soon as the balance comes in over. Talking about balance, of course you want to have balance in your life. You know, you want to starve. Never see your family like these detective shows. Anyway, the thing is, once you start overemphasizing balance in your life, it seems like the focus just goes off winning. And you try to justify that. I am spending enough time and it's never enough time. And, you know, even your mother, you know, I can remember she was at home. She didn't like being at home with the two little Indians, you and your brother. And, you know, she would feel sorry for herself, you know, and it's like, sure, you go off and have fun at work, you know, and leave me alone with the kids here, you know, go ahead and have fun. She made me feel guilty every time I went in the house, you know, to go to work. But guess what? I still went, you know, she had to deal with it because I had things I had to do. I couldn't stay home and hold her God blessed hand. And so I would be judged as having good balance in my life, you know, I'm not getting out of balance. No. The main thing I needed was more income. And I'll tell you this. We got up to North Carolina and we were renting a house, that little rental house, and we had problems where we were tight on money and we didn't know if we were going to make it. She came to the point where even she said, you know, she got to this point where she said one day she said, I don't care if I even see you for the next six months, you gotta make it. You gotta dig in this thing and make 10, 15, 20, $50,000 so we can make a down payment to get our own house. Because I don't like Ren and, you know, I don't like living in somebody else's house. And you know what I said, thank goodness she's off my back. You know, I can, you know, I, you know, I was still working, but I had that guilt thing. And if you've got spouses making you on a guilt trip, it's just gonna make what you gotta do harder. I've lived, it's. And so, but it did get better once we, maybe I needed that extra pressure because we did wind up recruiting 25,000 people over the next four years or three years. Maybe I needed the pressure. But anyway, as you know, you could restore balance in life. And do you hear that? Does that come up much, much in your world, Adam, the idea of family, work, work, family, personal life, balance thing?

Yes. But like you said, if you stay balanced all the time, you know, if you're balancing on a teeter totter, you never thump to success or you funk to elastic lack of success. You're like, it's nice to stay in the, it's nice to stay in the middle. If you never want to do anything really, really fantastic, really, really great, really whatever. Now that doesn't mean you have to stay off balance forever, but there's got to be times where you're off balance, putting the effort in, putting the energy in for a long enough period of time where it makes a difference. Because if you stay balanced forever, what does that mean? Nothing ever changes if the teeter totter never goes up or down. You know, life is nothing but ups and downs. And you can enjoy the ups, you can't really understand how great the ups are unless you've been through the downs. So if you keep everything balanced all the time, just ho hum, that's what, that's that balance. Another word for balance is mediocrity. So if you want to just have, you know, a medium mediocrity life all the time, stay balanced. But at some point you got to, you know, slam that thing down one side or the other. Because until you do, until you put all your energy in something for a long enough period of time to find out whether it can make a difference or not, you're never going to know.

Absorn lutely. And so let's go, here's lie number three. We could get in thing and we could talk to you about getting out of balance where what you've been doing for the last year for you've been training for a year for a bodybuilding competition in Vegas at the end of this week, totally warped your life around. Lost 40, 50 pounds and got in phenomenal shape, but there's things you put yourself through as a result. You haven't been able to go out to dinner with people, you haven't been able to do this, that and the other. Restricted your travel, but it's for purposes, not forever. So even in your own life, it's one thing with a family, but even in your own personal life, you disrupt things for a goal, for another target, for another thing inside your life. And so anyway, let's talk about lie number three. Be patient. Eventually I had this thing that just do good things. Don't be too money motivated. Don't be too much of a hurry. Do good things and eventually goodness and mercy will come and God will notice and the world will notice that you're just a good person and you're doing your normal stuff and you'll be rewarded. Just be patient. The rewards will come. And then I found out. Art Williams told me. He said, larry, that's one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard. He said, if you want success to have, you got to go make it happen. You know, if you want your income to grow, you got to be money motivated. You know, if you want a promotion, you got to go for it. If you want to build a business, if you want a breakthrough, you got to make it happen, he said, because it doesn't happen just by going along and expecting that life is going to find you and reward you. In other words, just wait. Your time will come versus saying okay, draw the line in the sand and say, okay, I can't guarantee myself success, but I can guarantee I'm going to go for it and I'm going to draw a line in the sand and I'm going to go for it now and throw your energy in there, whatever obstacles you've got in your way to make that happen. And so talk about, talk about that, Adam, how you've seen that in the.

In your world, you do have to be patient. But I think a lot of people hear that and say, think they have to be patient. And for that, that means to wait and not do anything and just sit on their hands and be patient. The problem is you have to work like a dog consistently and be patient as you're putting the work in. Not be patient and sit on the couch, but be patient while you're grinding away day in, day out, day in, day out. But I think a lot of people use that as an excuse. Well, I'm just being patient. I'm just waiting on the Lord. Well, that's great. But if you're not doing anything. You know, you have to be making strides and you have to be putting action in and effort to get where you want to go. But you have to be patient on the journey. But you can't hope and pray and be patient to get to your next destination. If you're sitting on the side of the road, you still got to keep walking. But you have to be patient in the. In the hustle, patient in the work. But you cannot stop. You cannot sit on the side of the road. You can't stop and sit on the couch. And, you know, if the Lord wants me to have a million dollars, he'll have the Domino's pizza guy give me a lottery ticket when he gets up here, you know, So I do think a lot of people use that as an excuse. Well, I'm just being patient. Well, you're not doing anything.

You hit the nail on the head. They're being patient and they're using that as an excuse to goof off and not make a maximum effort again. You're not gonna be good enough to do something great just sitting around doing the normal things. You've got to do extras. You got to push yourself. You've got to create surges. You got to cause a time to. Where I'm at the gym, where you're giving it a max effort because like, the way the muscles work, you gotta tear it down through max effort, and then it can rebuild. I think the same thing happens in your business, in your career, in your schedule. I know I put myself through a living hell and figured out a lot of things about this community in terms of specificity. You know, things like, well, you can't generally do it. You gotta specifically do it. You gotta specifically say it's this, that, the other. And so, you know, I, you know, cancel the schedule, put, you know, 10, 12 hours in, in a row, working this stuff, refining it down, refining it down. And it still takes weeks or months. And that's not unusual. But then when you get the result, it's mind blowing. Mind blowing, you know, because we want to go, you know, with this community. We want to assemble an army of winners that, you know, the bigger we get, the better we can get. I've learned, I've proved that to myself a thousand times. So it's not. We're gonna have elite little group of people, you know, a bigger group. But to get that, you know, it's just like a woman being pregnant, you know, she's gotta put herself. She. She's gonna have some. Some rough hours. In there to go through that pregnancy. But, you know, you're giving birth to a baby. And so you see that at the gym all the time. The people that just kind of go through the most, they've been going to the gym for 20 years, and they look the same or worse when they.

Started 100, sure, they put in that one hour a day, but the other 23, they're doing all the stuff they're not supposed to be doing. You know, if you want to change the way you look, you gotta pay attention to everything you're doing all day long, get enough sleep, mainly, and mainly the right food. And everybody puts all the energy on how many hours or how much you're doing in the gym. And that's about 15 of it. The majority of that is what you're eating, what you're taking in. Everybody always asked, you know, when you're trying to put muscle on, you're getting bigger. You always have people ask you, how can I get big? How can I get big? How can I get big? Somebody that's muscular, but you never have anybody walk up to somebody that's a hundred pounds overweight and ask them, how do they get big? You already know the answer. Now they got big. You know what I'm saying? They ate way too much food on a consistent basis for a long period of time and didn't have do much energy. You know, it's the same thing. If you want to put on muscle, you got to eat a consistent amount of the right kind of food for a long enough period of time. And then if you want to lose weight, same thing. I mean, obviously it's the wrong way to do it, but if you quit eating completely, you will starve. You will lose a bunch of weight and starve to death. You know, if. But if you want to put the energy into something and you really want to make strides in it, you got to be in whole. You got to put the whole effort in if you want the whole result.

All right, Adam and I, we appreciate your time. The thing is, these are all valid points, and you're going to hear them brought up from time to time. And so that's why you have got to get yourself. And people are going to be asking you about it, and they'll challenge you. They'll challenge you, you know, on all of these things. And so you've got to get yourself where it make these things. You. You worked it through in your own life where you can make it make sense to you, your opinion about work, life, balance, you know, priorities. And you know what? What you're being passionate about what you're doing and giving it your best effort and making growth happen. The all of these things are fundamentals of winning. And the more clear you are, the more definite you're going to be in making forward progress. So, Adam, thanks so much. And these are things we're talking about. We never stop talking about winning. And every single aspect of this is all winning the mental game. And the clearer you are, the more effective and productive you could be. So if you want if you like this, you want more, you can hit the like button and you can come visit us at the Big Hitter community dot com. Thanks, Adam.

All right. Thanks.