All right. All right, let's do this. Another episode of The Company We Keep podcast with Jason Pearl. I'm your host Jason Pearl. Really excited to have another topic to bring to you guys today: all around success. As we entered into this podcast series the first episode was more of an introduction to me, who I am, what I'm all about, my platform, things of that nature.

Second episode was all about a framework that I've used both personally and professionally to drive growth out of people and myself. And that was the Head, Heart and House concept. And I know I've gotten great feedback from all of you regarding that, and really happy that you've given those first two episodes a listen.

(00:40)

This third episode though is something near and dear to my heart - around the topic of success. This is something that I think all of us oftentimes talk about and think about, and we read books about them and we listened to podcasts about them. And we just do everything we can to try to figure out the secret recipe or the secret sauce of how do you become successful?

What are the traits and what are the things that you have to do to be successful? And there's certainly a significant amount of content out there that you can consume that can help you with certain habits and things of that nature. But one of the things that I wanted to talk about today is just the core concept of success

Within my business, one of the taglines I use is "Success is a choice." And just sit with that for a minute. Success is a choice. Okay, Jason success is a choice. I'm there, now what? Well, think about that. Is it a choice you make once? Is it a choice you make multiple times? Is it a choice you make daily? And in my opinion success is a choice that you make daily.

And I believe that this is a lot of the times where people fail. They think that if they just get their car headed the right way, straight, and they just start hitting the gas pedal, that everything else is going to work out. In my humble opinion, I believe it's very different. I believe that success is a choice every single day.

And when you talk about success, there's a couple of things that I want to talk about. So certainly, we're going to talk about success being a choice and how you go about choosing to succeed every day. But what does it mean when we say you have a choice to succeed and how do we go ahead and do that on a daily basis?

(02:23)

And I think what it really boils down to when it comes to success is what is important to you? What are the things that set you on fire? What are the things that you feel like if it was taken away from you, it would just ruin everything or it would just make you a completely different person?

Whether it be personally or professionally, but for me, success starts on the personal side. You have to figure out and put yourself in a situation: What you want to do? What you like to do? What fills your heart? What fills your soul? What makes you want to jump out of bed and hit the ground running every single day?

And once you define that, then you have to choose to strive for those things on a daily basis. You have to set your day up to make sure that you are doing those things that really fulfill you. So daily commitment is something that I think is super important.

You don't just get up out of bed and say, "I'm just going to mosey around today and just see what happens. Maybe I'll let the phone ring and see if somebody calls me to give me a successful opportunity, or maybe I'm going to see if I can be successful in my relationship with my spouse, but I'm not going to do anything proactively. I'm not going to do anything to set myself up for success. I'm just going to hope it comes to me."

And I think we all know that's not the path for success. So, you have to get up, and you have to understand on a daily basis what you have to do to make yourself successful based upon the things that you choose that you want to do, and the things that fill you up.

(03:58)

The other thing that I find when it comes to the topic of success is, I think there's a lot of times that people are afraid or ashamed of what they feel to be successful. Do not allow anyone to hijack what you believe success is for you. We're all individuals, we're all uniquely made by God.

And we all have an opportunity to choose what we want to do. Now, I understand that we're in the middle of a pandemic and some choices have maybe been made for us by our employers, or by the economy, or by this pandemic that has maybe unfortunately got us in a situation we're out of a job, or we're in a situation where our business was shut down. Or we're in a situation where the productivity that you or your business used to do is now decimated because of the pandemic. I understand that there are certain choices that are made for us. But that's not really what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about, not allowing anyone to hijack your success.

So, for example I surrounded myself with a group of guys that had a really successful podcast for a couple of years called the Entrepreneurial Family Men. And that was a podcast that was originated by four just dynamite gentlemen, dynamite guys that I surround myself with. And I'm super proud to call friends, colleagues. And we like to say, "We do our best to do life together - even though we all live in different areas." But this entrepreneurial family man group, they believe in some core principle s. And a few of the core principles were guys that are crazy about their wives, love their kids, and want to kill it in business.

So, for them, success is based upon being madly in love with your spouse and doing anything possible to make sure that's a successful relationship, number two, being the best father that you can be to your children, loving them and raising them the right way, and then killing it in business. Doing everything possible to ensure that whatever the business path that you're on, you succeed at it. And these are four guys that are just dynamite guys that have really spoke well into my life, and I'm just so proud to call friends: Christopher McCluskey Christopher Niemeyer, Michael McGreevy, and Jamie Slingerland.

And in the show notes, we'll link to all these guys' profiles, because these are guys that you should know, but to them, and when I was adopted into their group, their success for them was on those three levels. And there was certainly another underlying level that wasn't in their tagline, which was all these guys are super faithful, super Christian driven guys that want to live a life of virtue.

That's how they define success. And they were a big part of my success journey over the past four years, I'm still very close to all four of them, talk to them all the time. We'll certainly be having all of them or at least some of them on this podcast in the near future.

For me, that really fell into what I wanted success to be for myself. And again, success for me was all about doing what I thought I was gifted in, which I talked about in the first episode, which was I'm gifted dealing with people, and I understand how business works.

I wanted to do whatever possible to ensure that I could go out and help people in their businesses, help them grow, and develop these businesses that will have consistent revenue generation, and they can have consistent success. That was a professional goal. That's how I wanted to make sure that defining success professionally was going out and doing that.

And that's why I started Nacre Consulting. But on the personal side, I needed to make a decision at a certain point in time four years ago of what exactly I wanted to do for the rest of my life professionally, but what I really wanted to do personally. And I knew personally for me it was really important to be available, to be accessible, and to be around my family, my wife and my two kids as much as humanly possible. I do understand that they have to go to school and there's things that they have to do, and I have to do some work, but I wanted to create a life that was really driven on faith and family.

And for me to do that, I thought the best example, after I looked at a number of different examples, like the job opportunities and things of that nature, I said, this is the best way that I can succeed in my life with what I feel is important, which is prioritizing faith and family. So that's one of the main reasons, if not the main reason that Nacre Consulting was born.

So, what I decided to do and throughout that process is why I wanted to have this podcast is, I need to wake up every single day and choose to do certain things to make sure that it's aligned with what I believe success to be, which is being able to put faith and family first and understanding that I want to help businesses professionally do everything they can to grow and create consistent revenue growth so they can impact the people that work for them and their businesses for years to come.

So, when I wake up every day, I have to make sure that I'm focused on doing those things. So, when you go back and you look at it, when you see a podcast in the sea of podcasts that says, "Success is a choice," which is going to be the title of this podcast, people are going to think this is ultimately about business, but that's exactly where I think that the world has it wrong.

Oftentimes people are looking at business as in money is how they define success. And I'm just here to tell you that there's a different way to live. There's a different way to look at it. And I believe that if you actually put the things that light you on fire inside your soul first, and then you set up your life, secondly, to match that, I believe that you're going to feel and see and achieve success that you never thought you could achieve.

(09:09)

So, success isn't a business term. It's not reserved for high level executives. It's not reserved for entrepreneurs. It's not reserved just for people in business. And it's certainly not reserved for just money. And we live in a world where money and material possessions and things are what elevates peoples’ status.

Put again, that's where we have it all wrong. I know a ton of people that they make decent money, but they are some of the happiest people I've ever met in my entire life, because they're doing exactly what they want to be doing every single day. And that is success. That is how you define it. We live in a world where the American dream is defined. It's defined for us. You go to school, you go to college, you get out of college, you get a job, you find a spouse, you settle down, you have 2.2 kids, you get a white picket fence, you get a mortgage, you still have student debt, and you work for 40 years punching a clock, working for the weekends, hoping that things are going to work out so you can drive your mid-level sedan and go on a vacation once a year.

And I'll tell you, I know a lot of people and they're great with that. And that is something that provides them the life that they want - and more power to them. So as long as that adds up, that's fine. But I know a lot of people that are in that world that really don't want that.

That's not something that lights them on fire every day. That's not what they want to do, but they do it because they think that they have to, and they think they don't have another choice. And there certainly are tons of other choices out there. And again, this isn't saying that you have to go start a business.

It's certainly not saying that - there are some people that are very equipped to run businesses, and there's others that they want nothing to do with it. They've owned businesses before, and they never want to do it again because they realized it wasn't for them. That's all fine and good.

We live in a world now with technology that makes life so much easier to figure out how we can surround what we do professionally with what we want to do personally. Just think about how many remote work opportunities there are out there today. Think about how many people, certainly now in this pandemic, they're working from their home. They're sitting somewhere in their house, doing their job and probably doing it in some situations much better than they did when they were going to the water cooler every five minutes talking to their colleagues. So, there's totally so many other opportunities that remote work has created to live where you want to live, do the work that you want to do, or be in a situation where you have an opportunity to still be a parent and be able to be home and watch your kids. And things of that nature. There are so many opportunities out there. And I think it's really important to understand what those are. And I think as you move forward with that, and you start thinking about it, one of the takeaways that, piece of homework, maybe that I'd like you guys to do after listening to this podcast is sit down and think about, and ask yourself the question, what does success mean to me?

How do I define success? And then the follow-up question to that is, am I living that out? And if the answer to the first question is "I don't really know what success is," then it's probably time that you sit down and, whether you're a single person or whether you're in a relationship or you're married, sit down and discuss that.

Why don't I understand what success is? What is success to you, spouse? And then you can say success to me, I think, is this. And then what are we going to do in our lives on a daily basis to ensure that we're achieving that. So, I think that's one of the things you could do.

And then secondly, it's just do an audit of what encompasses your day. There's the work part of what encompasses it, but then it's, what is life like when work ends? What is life like at home? And how has that defined? How are you being successful or unsuccessful at that?

So, I think that's something that, from a homework standpoint would be interesting for you guys all to do. And again, I was telling a story to a friend one day and it was all around legacy. Legacy is a word and a term that people throw out all the time. And, somebody asked me, what I want to be remembered for.

If you die, unfortunately, and it's your funeral and somebody is giving your eulogy. What would you want that to look like? What would you want people to say about you? And I knew immediately that I don't want anyone to be bringing up, "He was a great professional. He was a great business owner. He was amazing at growing businesses. He was really good at making other people money." Dead. If that's what people are going to first, I failed as a human being. I want people to say, " He instilled tons of confidence in me. He was always there for me. He was faithful. He was somebody that you could always count on. He was somebody that was always loving. He was a great dad. He was a wonderful husband. He was a wonderful family member." Those are the things, at my funeral, I want those people to say.

So, I have to choose every day. If I want those things to be said about me, and I want that to be the legacy that I leave. It doesn't happen by happenstance, it happens on purpose, and it happens on purpose because you're choosing every single day to push that on other people. You're choosing every day to go out into the world and make those things happen.

When you're thinking about success, you should do a little bit of a deep dive personally and figure out what that looks like and what it's all about. And I think that if you do that little exercise, I think you'll find that there's some things that you're doing really well.

There are some things that you've been very intentional about. And I think you may find that there's some other areas in your life that you need to work on. I am not perfect. I'm extremely far from it, have made tons of mistakes in my life, make a lot of mistakes on a weekly basis. So, this is something that, as I'm talking into this microphone, the same thing I'm telling you is the same thing I have to do, because anyone that sits on a pedestal and says that they have it all figured out and everything is perfect. That's probably their first error, that they think they've got it all figured out. I certainly don't have it figured out. And again, that's another reason why I did this podcast. There are things that I struggle with. There are things that trip me up and where I fall down. And you gotta learn from all those things. And I think when it comes to defining success, we all fail in one way, shape or form. And the reason that we fail is because we allow the outside world or other people to define that for us.

How many stories have you heard of,"My dad wanted me to go to school to be a doctor because he was a doctor" or "My dad wanted me to take over the family business and I didn't want to do it, but I was forced to do it” or, "My parents put a lot of pressure on me in school cause they paid for my school to do this and to do that. And I don't want to do it, but I have to do it because they paid for it. Now I feel obliged to do it." Those are things that I understand that parents and people around you oftentimes have, they want what's best for you, but you can't allow people to tell you as an adult, what is best for you.

Because if it's not something you believe in, and it's not something that you're set on fire to do on a daily basis, then you shouldn't be doing it. Now, are there certain situations where, you know for a short period of time that you need to be doing something that maybe you don't like, or you don't want to do, because you're trying to maybe earn enough money to go do something else or to pay a bill or to help somebody out within your family that you need to help out.

Of course, those are things that you should do, but in the grand scheme of things, if you allow people to define your own success for you, that is a very rapid way to get to failure. Because if you're unhappy mentally and you're unhappy in your heart, you're in a lot of trouble.

It goes back to the episode last week where we talked about Head, Heart, and House. If what you're doing on a daily basis isn't stimulating your mind, isn't filling your heart, and isn't doing what it needs to do for the people that count on you, then you need to figure out a different option.

As we get deeper into this podcast, we're going to talk a lot about those things and, happy to, take questions if you have questions or thoughts. You can always connect with me at podcast@jasonmpear.com. Or you can shoot me a note on LinkedIn, or on Instagram, or even on Facebook, if we're on that together.

But this is the type of stuff that. Again, I don't have it all figured out, but what I do have figured out is I know that I have to make a choice every day to succeed. And if I don't do that, I'm going to fail. And I feel like you should look at it the same way.

When you go back and, after you spent the 15 or 20 minutes listening to this podcast, maybe take five minutes and start thinking about that. Maybe you're a journaler, or maybe write it down in a journal or take out a piece of paper and just start writing some ideas down. But take action.

(17:14)

Success doesn't happen on accident. It happens on purpose and I'd love to encourage you to just do everything possible to choose to succeed on a daily basis. We're going to talk about this a lot more on this podcast series, but I just wanted to have this be the intro and the start of our conversation.

Really appreciate you guys listening. Let's have some engagement after this. We'd love to hear your thoughts on it and love to hear maybe what you're doing on a daily basis to succeed or what you think you need help with.

Either way would love to hear from you again, this is The Company We Keep podcast. This is Jason Pearl. Super excited for you to be with us. And on this journey with me, would love to hear from you and feel free to reach out in any of the social platforms. So, thanks again for tuning in. I look forward to talking to you guys again in the next episode of The Company We Keep podcast.

This is Jason Pearl. I'm out.