When I switched from covering professional sports as a newspaper reporter to sales and marketing, I owned one suit and hadn’t yet mastered the art of matching a shirt and tie well. I was a nervous public speaker, where my notes would literally shake from nerves. My love of procrastination wouldn’t allow me to develop a system for preparation.
This morning, I was giving tips on professional attire to one of our guys. I ran a workshop on preparation and ran a smooth morning meeting in front of our entire company. It was somewhere in the neighborhood of the 1300th time I’ve spoken in front of a large audience in the past five years.
The growth has been amazing. The growth has been painful. The growth has been worth it.
I know I am not the only person who left one career to start another. I also know my desire for new challenges, mental stimulation, career advancement and the satisfaction of achievement weren’t unique. Wanting those things wasn’t the tough part. The challenge, as I found out, was staying committed to the growth plan and fighting off the urges to return to what was comfortable.
To borrow from a wonderful author, Jack Canfield, in a fantastic book, “The Success Principles,” you have to build your success team. I did just that. I studied the most successful people I knew. (Note: my standard of success is pretty high. I looked for people who had no money concerns, wonderful families, critical transferable skills that made them economy proof, control of their time and constant challenge and stimulation in the workplace.) I also started reading lots of books.
Then, I did something crazy. I did whatever it was that my success team did to be successful. It just seemed stupid to tell everyone who would listen that I wanted growth, study what successful people did to grow and then lie to myself that I had a better way to do it simply because the way people grow is tough.
Over the next few years, I pushed myself out of my comfort zone to develop the skills, habits and mentalities of the successful. This meant I had to become organized. I had to develop unconditional faith in myself. I had to learn to sell and communicate at high level. I needed to read more and become okay with how much I didn’t really know. I needed discipline with setting goals. I had to train myself to think big even in the midst of the smallest functions. I had to genuinely put others first to lead.
Not a single thing was easy or pain free. I wanted to quit all of it several times. I failed repeatedly. I had to. That’s what all the successful people have done. That’s the path to growth.
- Joe Nolan
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