In this monologue, Richard Milligan argues that the single most powerful driver for leaders—especially recruiting leaders facing in‑person meetings—is a clear understanding of their purpose, calling, and "why." He challenges listeners to define their larger purpose, noting that without this clarity, navigating difficult seasons becomes impossible. Milligan shares personal reflections, emphasizing that at age 46 he feels he is operating at his highest level, attributing his achievements to sustained perseverance rather than quick fixes. He describes perseverance as the repeated, long‑term effort of doing the right things over many seasons to achieve desired results. Finally, he links this internal clarity and perseverance to the effectiveness of face‑to‑face meetings, asserting that leaders must know their why to convincingly position themselves as the market’s leader of choice.
Chapters
I think one of the biggest motivators— let's just say this— I think the largest motivator on the planet, this thing that allows us to walk through brick walls, that allows us to get through these incredibly difficult seasons, is having clarity around our purpose, clarity around our calling, having clarity around why we do what we do. So if you're sitting here today, I just challenge you, ask yourself, what's my why? Like, what's my larger calling? What's my purpose in being here? If you can't answer that, then you need to be able to answer that. Because look, life is hard, right? A wise man once said, anything worth having in this life You will have to fight for it. When I look at my own life, one of the things I'm very aware of is that anything that I have today at this ripe old age of 46— I don't feel old, by the way. I feel like I'm like, for whatever reason, I'm functioning at the highest level I've ever functioned at the age of 46. For those of you that think that 46 is old, you have something to look forward to because you can connect the dots in so many things so quickly that if I could have connected the dots in these things when I was 30, I was pretty immature at 30, so let's just be honest about that. I could have accomplished so much more. But one of the things I know in this journey to get to the age of 46 is that anything that I have today that's worth having has come through the lens of perseverance. Perseverance is the 12-letter dirty word. Like, I don't know. Don't tell me to persevere. Tell me that success is coming quickly. Tell me that I've gotten one step away from slaying the dragon, from doing something really big. But the truth is that anything that I have in this life, I have had to persevere. I've had to do the right thing again and again and again for a long season to actually get to the place where I wanted the results that I wanted, to get to the place where I had the results that I wanted. This question around what is your largest motivator, what is your calling, What is your purpose? What is your why? It's an important piece that you as a leader have to get clarity on if this face-to-face meeting is going to be the face-to-face meeting that you need to convince someone that you are the leader of choice in the market that they're in.
