Know why you do what you do

that’s pretty simplistic you need to know why right now how I define why is this purpose cause or belief that inspires you to become more that inspires you to be more like this is this is a for me was a huge turning point in my life I go back to 2007 and 2007 I’ve been in the mortgage industry for about five years and for those of you that can reflect back to like 2007 2008 2009 it’s hard to believe that 2007 has been 12 almost 13 years ago but I can reflect back those moments I was in growth mode inside my mortgage business and I’d taken a lot of risk to get to the next stage of my mortgage business and I had just taken that risk I just signed leases on facilities to do five year leases to do entire build outs I was in growth mode and there’s that statement you don’t know what you don’t know until you know it well that was true about me and I didn’t know it until it was too late and I’d taken this enormous financial risk and what was coming at me pretty quickly being in the mortgage industry was a lot of pain I had to recreate myself my business model was broken and so in the recreating myself and getting from one revenue stream or one book of business to the other revenue stream in the other book of business it was painful and for those of you that no portion of my story look I grew up I’m incredibly poor and you know when I left home one of the things that I said is that I’ll never go back to that I mean remember missing meals eating saltine crackers and powdered milk for breakfast you know being evicted from homes having homes that were ultimately just taken from us and having to move and downsize enormous Lee and just all these things that created confusion as I was a kid and looking back and then some of them I didn’t realize that what they were at the time I just know was changed and changed and there was a lack of and a lack of and when I left home at the age of 19 I just said I’m never gonna live like that and so 2007 rolls around at the time I’ve got a five-year-old son Ethan I’ve got a newborn Gavin and I’m looking failure for the first time in my life straight in the face and there’s no way around it it’s only through it and I can tell you in that season like there were times where I actually asked the question to myself like is this even worth living for and I think some of those components played into the fact that I’d made a promise to myself I’m never going to get here and in 2007 we lost our house we lost our cars to the large degree I lost my my I would say dignity but honestly I lost my pride and that was a value to me in that season to get to where I am today is that I lost my pride but I would have told you this season was dignity because to go through that to fail publicly in front of your family and your friends and a community because I positioned myself and a leadership role to walk through that failure I got ultimate clarity on my why and I remember waking up in the mornings and thinking to myself like today’s just not worth living I’m gonna walk through hard conversations all day long we have to walk through a season of recreating myself and I’m not even sure I want to do that and in that season Leah and I were married had been married for almost 10 years Ethan’s five Gavin’s a newborn I looked in the face of those three human beings and said that’s my wife they are my cause they are my purpose and my belief was that like like they need me like I’ve been called to provide to have a role in the three of their life and that inspired me to become more in that season and because it wasn’t about money any longer wasn’t about success it wasn’t about like what people thought of me it wasn’t about any of that what it was about was about them and so I did it for Leah I did it for Gavin it for evening I did it for three of them and that clarity of my why actually inspired me to go through that season and to become more you got to know why you do what you do and it doesn’t necessarily have to be your family okay sometimes I think where we get to a place of comfort we get to place of convenience we’re like hey we’ve made it we’ve arrived financially we’re safe right family’s good like you know things in my world are going well I’m in a place a leadership of my organization sometimes you have to create a larger why a larger purpose a larger cause a larger belief that inspires you to become more look we’re doing it I’m doing it right now inside my own organization I’m I’m talking to someone an individual in Uganda that has a orphanage that’s an individual that was born and raised in poverty in Uganda that now has 60 children under the care of what they are calling their orphanage and they have little to zero funding to go from day to day week to week month to month for food for clothing for schooling for some basic needs and so I’m calling bringing myself into a larger why today this larger purpose cause our belief is going to inspire me to become more you