From Opportunity magazine
Vol. 1, Issue 1, Q3 2006
KEEP IT SIMPLE
STAY FOCUSED ON YOUR CORE PRIORITIES
Like all of us, I am asked questions such as "what's new" or "what have you been up to lately?" I answer the question simply and consistently the same way each time by saying, "faith, family, and business."
These things have engaged me and my passion and enthusiasm for the last 28 years. Since I married my sweetheart in 1979, started our business in 1980, and joined our church in 1981, these three things have been my obsession. While I enjoy regular exercise and an occasional game of golf, I see these things and other forms of recreation as part of the support for a balanced life. I strive to not let anything interfere with my areas of core focus.
Let me tell a personal story to illustrate. All through my college years, I loved playing the game of tennis. A few years ago, I decided to pick up the game again as a workout tool. I made contact with a local tennis pro and would set times for us to play together several times a week. It started with 30 to 45 minutes. After a few weeks, I found myself extending the time to an hour or more.
Then one day when I didn't really have the time because of family demands, I found myself sneaking off to go play. After I had been there about an hour, I could "feel" my wife's concern, as experienced, caring husbands can do, back at our home. Soon my cell phone rang on the bench beside the court. I knew who it was, and I rationalized that I would be home soon and did not answer it. I continued the workout for about another half-hour.
As I drove home, I pondered what I had just done and how it was in conflict with my core commitments. I asked myself a question: "Was this increasing focus on my tennis workouts of a greater priority than my wife's feelings and needs of the moment?"
According to my personal beliefs, my answer could only be an emphatic no. I took my tennis rackets to our hallway storage closet and put them on the top shelf, and there they remain to this day. I invested in an elliptical exercise machine for our home and beach house. And while I get my cardiovascular exercise I am seldom tempted to stay on it an extra hour and be away from my family and other commitments.
I love my faith. I love my wife and our children. I love our business and what we do for people. I am sold out to these things and I want to live a sold out life. I think most of us understand that we can't sell out to 10 or 20 different things any more than a great athlete will play five or six professional sports. We need to zero in on those things that will give us the greatest "rate of return."
For me, those things are faith, family and business. I think the concept of perfect balance in life is a myth. I know there are times we need to devote more of our energies to strengthening ourselves spiritually just as there are times we need to recommit to the welfare of our marriages and our families. So it is with building our businesses also.
We are entering what I see as the Golden Era of WFG and our opportunity. We can accomplish amazing things in our business lives in just a handful of years. Yet even as I believe this is true, I also wholeheartedly believe that personal happiness is not to be found in business success alone.
Most of my life, I have been an intense competitor. After we started our business, within a few months, I found myself almost living for the competition and recognition on the company leader's bulletin. I dreamed of becoming the No. 1 base shop. When I did it, I dreamed of doing it every month.
After achieving the No. 1 spot for several months in a row, I started worrying about keeping up that performance. I not only wanted to be No. 1, I wanted to be the only one. (Which is not only impossible, it's stupid!) I became obsessed.
There I was, 32 years old, already a multimillionaire and, more importantly, a man of faith, married to a world-class woman, with two children as good as any family had ever been blessed with (now three), and I was making myself miserable. I was looking for answers where there were none.
One Sunday afternoon, Cindy and I had a heart-to-heart talk that changed our lives. We knew we wanted to build a big and successful business, but as we did so, we also decided our church labors and our family focus needed to be our ultimate priority because we saw those things as eternal in significance.
If you are going to win big in this business, you are going to need to sacrifice and work very, very hard. As you pay the price, be sure that what you sacrifice are not the critical things but rather your hobbies, sports, TV, video games, casual socializing and other such distractions.
Simplify your life while you build your business and move toward financial independence. Learn to discipline yourself and use time more efficiently. Paying the price does not mean being one-dimensional, but it does mean totally committing to the things that really matter. Stay focused and let's build great businesses and great lives. Then and only then will it all be worth it.