The whole concept of knowing what Why is, it helps you get through the bad days because let’s be honest—starting your company, entrepreneur, freelancer, it’s not all unicorns and rainbows. Finding your Why is also about knowing and finding your purpose. If you have a real purpose driven life that feeds into your career, which gives your life meaning.
Show Notes:
00:31 Nanci: We’ve just been having a discussion on what find your means? So we’re going to have this conversation right here and for me the whole concept of knowing what my why is, is it helps me get through the bad days because let us be honest starting your company, entrepreneur, freelancer it’s not all unicorns and rainbows. You don’t always feel like you’re flying and you got this. All sorts of things are tough, including productivity, motivation and sometimes you just think, you know what maybe I should just go back to work, and I know that because I did that. I think that is one of the reasons I didn’t succeed the first time that I set out is like my why wasn’t clear. And so for me, it’s very practical, tangible story which I’ll share in a minute, but when I feel like times are tough and I’d rather just go for lunch, go to the gym, take a nap, I remember that if I don’t push through and focus on my Why that there’s a very real chance that I’ll have to go back to work.
01:39 Julian: I don’t disagree with you, but I think, for me finding your Why, is really about knowing and finding your purpose. What is the reason for embarking on a life that’s going to fought with risk, unstable and not predictable revenue streams? We’re selling it here, aren’t we? I know it’s true though we have to do the good and the bad. Yeah, I think think if you have a real purpose driven life that feeds into your career, which give your life meaning. You know the difference between working a job and having a purpose is night and day. If you’re just going there to fill in the hours of your day because you got to make money or got bills to pay, but you come home at night feeling exhausted and depressed. You work in a job, I’m not disparaging the reality that bills do need to be paid and money needs to be made but money in itself is not a purpose and you need to have a passion and discover that passion whether you know it or not yet for something that’s bigger than just making money because your purpose is going to lead you forward and it’s never going to go away, and jobs you know, here today is gone tomorrow. Absolutely. I guess just to elaborate a little further on how I see things, people often talked about vision, mission, and purpose these are the 3 kinds of let’s brainstorm together and have our company spend a lot of money on developing these things but there banning about these terms that always discreetly do define so I’ve done some thinking on it and listen to other people who are smarter than me talked about it and I would say my definition is as false. Your vision is the change that you want to see in the world. So what’s the difference that you want to see, what’s the outcome? This ties into another theme down the row where we start out, we discuss beginning with the end in mind. Your vision for the world has to include, the difference you’ve made. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is how you are going to do that, so that’s the tactical part of what are you going to do that’s got to help you achieve your vision and your purpose is why you’re doing it in the first place? Do you want to give the world a clean water supply or help mothers connect with their daughters or ensure that every stray animal in the world has a home? It’s up to you what you determine to be the purpose of your life and the vision you have for that changed world, but without thinking it thru in the beginning you risk wasting a lot of time running around in circles, and we’re hoping here that we can help you, your shortcut to finding your why.
04:44 Nanci: When we’re talking about the episode, we had very different ideas I think about what find your why meant to each of us. I do agree, it’s just for me, and maybe we need a want to put you on the spot for a minute because I don’t even know for sure exactly, you have given me something to think about with this hierarchy of vision. Vision, mission, and purpose; Vision is the change you want to see in the world, your mission is how you are gonna do it, and your purpose is why you’re doing it in the first place.
05:38 Nanci: Okay, so maybe for me it’s more the purpose when I’m talking about finding your Why, getting you thru the tough times that could a little bit purpose but will be talking about that. What for you is your why? in your definition of Find your why what is yours, Julian Haber?
05:54 Julian: I want to connect with people and be a connector for people. It sounds odd as a photographer but over the years of working as a photographer I largely focus on no pun intended, covering large events, big conferences and I spent a lot of my working hours when I’m a photographer and in amongst huge crowds of people almost all the time which I love but I’ve kept a blog where I try a little bit further into photography and what it means and why I still love it even after all these years, and I realize that I use photography to connect to people and not only do I connect personally with the people that I’m photographing but I find that the images can help people connect with each other and with themselves. a woman I met worked for the peace corps and she says “you know basically, we used technology to help bring peace in the world” flippantly but not so much and later on I discovered, responded “well I used technology to help people smile because people always have to smile when you take their picture”. But afterward, I thought a little bit further on that and I thought, you know what that is really one of the reasons why I love doing what I’m doing, and I do think that it’s important thing to do because I see myself as a connector, I see myself as somebody that’s you know, what I’m doing right now I’m seeking to connect with my audience, Nanci, bring ideas, borrow from one person to pay somebody else, to put somebody together with someone else that could help them out whether that’s an idea or individual or a tool or practical tip, and that gives me a sense of meaning and purpose in my life, and that’s my Why.
07:55 Nanci: I have something to add to it though just for myself, but as soon as he said like I want to connect and I want to connect with people I mean here we are two entrepreneurs-freelancers that spend a lot of time working together, at one point we had a lunch, and we started talking and I think we had sushi and I believe that we close the place. At that meeting, I said you know what I’ve wanted to do a podcast, and want to do it with me? And I mean, it was kind of like a strange request because we were acquaintances, and I think a podcast is actually a kind of, I don’t wanna say an intimate thing but it’s a little bit more than, but he said yeah let’s do a podcast, and it took us a few months to get it together, but here we are. So, I agree with the connecting something with connecting to get this message out plus something that was g to talked about throughout the podcast is you are g to find yourself alone, and it’s sometimes nice to collaborate on a project together even just to get that, that social interaction. One thing when Julian was talking about that jump out from me, and my Why was, I have this thing about overcoming unfairness like I won’t go as far as to say injustice like I’m not g to put my cape on and save. But it bothers me when a situation is unfair, and I feel that I have the tools to sort of level the playing field in fairness and I can see two ways that I’ve done that, my online course- zerotoportfolio.com is without going too far down the rabbit hole, the investment industry is so stacked against the individual investor. It’s just awful; I have laid awake at night just angry about how small investors especially women are taking care of by the industry and so I have built a whole career over helping overcome that unfairness in the financial industry. The second thing is this podcast, and some of the work that Julian and I are looking at going forward is this unfairness about the way that employees are treated, I honestly think that employees have been taken advantage of by employers, not all employers obviously but in certain situations employers have held the card, and they sort of will did it. I think you can hear it in my voice, it makes me so angry how we’ve been taking advantages of, some of us as employees and now we can just leave, that’s what this podcast is about and I want to move forward with helping people build a platform, build a business, get online and if you don’t want to play the game if you don’t like the rules you can change the rules or you can just quit the game. So thank you, Julian I didn’t even know that that was a why for me. It is connecting with people and doing what I can in leveling the playing field where I feel unfairness exist. That’s it, and I would like to talk about a little bit about what I thought about the beginning of this conversation about Find your Why because it has to help me get through the hard times and when you get to the hard times you can take your business to the next level over and over again. Just to keep going with this, for me it comes down to a specific story, and I keep this story in the back of my head. I’ve sometimes been tempted to actually like publish it on a large sticky note on my wall. This is back when I was director of marketing of a company that shall not be named. Short story I was bringing the CEO who wanted to overlook all copy that went out for any reason, I brought him a one-page sheet and somebody else had actually written a copy, and it was my job to facilitate between the writer and the CEO and the CEO was reading the copy and I was just sitting there and he was using this big red pen and he had read somewhere I guess that when your writing copy benefits are better than features, and so he kept crossing out the word features and changing it to benefits which would have been fine except the bulleted list under were – features, the person who have written the copy- they were features, so I went back I made his revisions but I changed it back to features because that’s what they were and when we went back he sort of gave me the look he crossed it out again like I’ve made some sort of error and its very very small thing that at that moment, I just felt so oppressed and no offence to anyone who’s actually oppressed but that was my feeling at that moment, and it goes back to my thing “if you don’t build your own business, someone will hire you to build theirs” and it sort of the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. There have already been a series of unfortunate events where I was unhappy, and I think I gave my notice within a week of that incident and that’s my story. wanna be here in 10 years watching the CEO cross-out the word features and add benefits and for me it’s about getting out the corporate environment and what will happen I’ve read this in Julian’s book Gigonomicsbook.com your mind would play tricks on you and when you get into an entrepreneurial situation, and you have a bad day or bad week you start fantasizing about going back to work, your mind “maybe it wasn’t that bad, I missed the study paycheck, I miss the water cooler, I miss the paid vacations and so for me and this podcast about Find your why. My Why is why am I doing this and what do I need to so I don’t get back into a situation that I feel were the grass is greener on the other side.
14:28 Julian: I think that’s a valid point, Nanci that there’s a negative association with something that drives you away from something and that is energy, but I think we also need to ask how does somebody find their why who’s maybe not in this situation that’s particularly oppressive or particularly exciting, how do you make a change or how do you discover what your why is, deliberately as oppose to letting it happens that come to you through experiences or circumstances, and I think there are some ways of doing that I think 1) You have to think deeply about what you actually care about in life. What do you care about and don’t judge yourself because if you care about money or status? I think you have to remove the self-censoring effects where we try to – let’s say we really care about making the world a better place, feeding orphans because people will admit to that not many people actually drive their life based on those principles and in terms of finding your Why and exercise it, your going to have to do it at home or you’ll be doing throughout this experience we’re sharing together you need to ask yourself what you care about and why do you care about that and how can you contribute to what it is you care about and that’s easier said than done but part of it comes paying attention to what interest you I think there’s an awful piece of advice out there that says follow your bliss and I know it’s terrible advice because I tried to follow it and if your bliss is getting loaded in traveling around the world and trying to pick up strangers in bars it’s fun for a while, but it’s not going to lasts forever. Back in university or when I was younger trying to figure out what I was gonna do with my life I remember distinctly getting that piece of advice and there was a book that was very popular at that time called “What color is your parachute” and the idea was you find out what really makes you happy and you do that but that didn’t help me determine anything to do because things that made me happy were reading books and writing and hanging out with my friends and I guess I wasn’t that deep of a person at the time but I think it’s much better way to discover your Why is to find out and pay attention to what your curious about, what are you interested in, what you wanna learn about? That’s g to lead you forward because curiosity is a light and if you follow your curiosity it takes you to where your interest is and exercising curiosity kind of leads you forward, and it’s inexhaustible supply of energy. One piece of advised is if you don’t know what your Why is, or your sick hearing people tell you “just find your passion” forget all that– what are you curious about? What do you want more know about? Do you want to learn how to code? Do you want to learn how to fly planes? Do you want to be a gardener? Raise rabbits for pets or meat. Whatever it is if you’re curious about something that’s where you start.
17:59 Nanci: I have two things to say: One I think you nailed it, about this whole you brought it together with our two differences yours is looking forward. Your Why is big picture, what am I moving forward to and I think that’s probably a better definition of finding your Why. Where we talked about, overcoming unfairness or connecting or being a connector. Mine is moving away from something negative and maybe find your why isn’t the right definition for that but sort of the continuum. I think both are critical to look back and say I don’t want to go back there and to look forward and say that’s where I’m going. I think that’s sum’s up with this episode is about is for you to know both those. The second thing I wanted to say was knowing your why or knowing your Whys, the What and the How will become so much more evident and I think both of us Julian and I have spent time spinning our wheels on the what and the how and you go down so many rabbit holes and so one of the questions is when you have like a what or a how or even a when is to ask yourself “Does this fit into my why, my purpose, my vision and the answer is no” it can wait.
19:23 Julian: I’m re-quoting someone else re-quoting, so James Altucher has a list of 17 different things you should do every day that be a better person or something like that but one of them as he quotes Warren Buffett who says “Write down the 25 things that you want to accomplish in your life and then strike off the last 20 just do the first 5 and never think again of the other 20″
19:55 Julian: I believe that we will leave you with finding your why as your mission for the next week before our next podcast comes out. My two cents are pay attention to your curiosity, don’t judge yourself, don’t censor yourself pursue the line of thinking wherever it leads you and takes one small action steps towards following through on that. So if you’re curious about learning how to use phyton, if our curious about starting a blog go on to wordpress.com download a theme and write your first blog post or if you’re curious about becoming a photographer take your phone out in your pocket or even better go out and buy a camera and challenge yourself to walk around for an hour and find things to take pictures of, whatever it is you’re curious about that’s where you going to start and that’s going to help you discover why you’re doing what you going to do and how going to change your life.
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