Unlocking Your Potential: Discover Your Passion and Purpose with Larry Long Jr.
Do you feel stuck in a rut, going through the motions of your daily routine without real purpose or direction? Are you longing for something more in your life? If so, this episode is for you.
In this episode, we discuss how to identify and use your passions and talents to create a meaningful life that brings you joy and purpose. We'll also discuss obstacles that may arise when pursuing your dream, and how to overcome them with courage and determination. You'll learn practical tips for overcoming adversity.
Whether you're looking to advance your career, pursue a creative passion, or live a more fulfilling life, this episode will inspire and motivate you to take action and make your dreams a reality.
After this episode, you'll be able to...
Identify your passions and talents
Create a meaningful life that brings you joy and purpose
Set and achieve courageous goals
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About our guest:
Larry Long Jr is the Founder and CEO of LLJR Enterprises, which focuses on business & sales motivation, inspiration, and, most importantly, transformation through speaking, coaching & training programs. He is the host of the weekly, ‘Midweek Midday Motivational Minute’ and the Author of ‘JOLT!’.
As a former college athlete (He played baseball for the University of Maryland… Go Terps!), Larry is extremely passionate about coaching and helping professionals and leaders take their game to the 'next level.' As an experienced sales leader with a demonstrated history of success in SaaS sales, Larry brings a unique perspective to the table and understands many of the challenges faced by sales professionals today.
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Define Sales and “Selling” Ourselves
There is no doubt if anyone wants to be successful in sales, you have got to have an optimistic approach to life because there are gonna be constant setbacks. There's gonna be constant, knows that you're going to hear, and it really takes a lot of resilience and grit and courage to have a sustainable career in sales.
We are all in sales because even if you're in customer service, your approach in sales is retaining customers. We all have to sell something and it may even be ourselves.
How do you define sales? There are two definitions that I look at for sales:
It's a transfer of energy. Your energy doesn't have to be dynamite. But you better have some sort of gumption, some sort of juice, and you better let it loose. Because our clients, our prospects, they can smell BS from a mile away. They can tell whether you're in it to serve them or whether you're in it to serve yourself. I think they call me monsters and commission breath. You can have all the tic-tacs in the world. It can't cure commission breath.
We're playing matchmaker. We're matching whatever we have. Our products, our services, our thoughts, our ideas. You talked about having to sell ourselves. We're matching it with other people's needs, wants, desires, their challenges, hopes, dreams, aspirations, and their problems. And if we're able to make that match, I guess, we are selling.
What happens is so many times try to solve problems that people don't have. It's like me going to the doctor and the doctor saying, “Hey, I'm the best ankle surgeon in the world. Doc, you didn't listen. It's my shoulder, not my ankle. What are you talking about Willis?”
I remember distinctly, I was looking at solar panels for my house and the sales rep led with, well, these solar panels are graded at this level and they're sold in X, Y, Z countries. And I remember thinking, I don't care where they're sold. I care how it fits my house. And now it's really hard.
When you have been successful in a sales career—and you know that when you start to understand what your client’s goals and their problems are; if you don't ask the questions about what their problems are, then you're not gonna know how your product may or may not solve their problems.
And that can be the same approach, whether you're in sales or even if you're leading teams, you've gotta understand if you're a leader, it's understanding what are your team members’ challenges so that you can support them, so you can mentor them, so you can help remove barriers and obstacles so that they can be successful.
Leading with Value and Problem-Solving
And really leadership, especially in sales, it is selling. You're selling to those that you lead. And when I was a leader, a sales manager, there were three things that I focused on.
We gotta hit targets. We gotta hit our goals. That keeps the lights on.
We gotta keep learning and growing. As the leader, you've got to lead by example, and then you need to encourage your team:
a. a growth atmosphere
b. a growth mindset
c. a growth environment
We gotta have fun. If we're doing number one and number two at a high level, we're gonna have a lot of fun.
It's a matter of having fun, being optimistic, and joy.
Let's talk about what a growth mindset is because Carol Dewi is a psychologist and she's the one that developed or kind of coined this phrase, go growth mindset and what that means is you're either approaching your life with a fixed mindset, which says, you are born this way and this is how you're gonna be for the rest of your life or a growth mindset is a belief that:
You can grow, develop, and learn new skills. You can take some of those weaknesses or opportunities that some people say someone might have and learn to develop skills to overcome them.
Take It For What It Is
Life is a four-letter word.
What I see on the flip side is those that are open and flexible and kind of have made a decision inside that, you know what, maybe things aren't going as great as I would like them to be, and there's an opportunity for me to learn, for me to grow, for me to look at and really take the perspective of, hey, things might be in a rut, but I'm going to look for the good and the wonderful, and I'm going to use those lessons to help propel me.
But sometimes folks are so focused on that door that closed, they miss out on the window of opportunity that's right in front of them.
So I encourage folks to take it for what it is. It's a growth opportunity. You're either gonna win or you're gonna learn. And sometimes when we learn, it's painful, but it propels us to success, great success in the future.
There are so many times in my life where I have wanted something specific and it didn't happen in the timeframe that I wanted it to happen.
I look back and I say, wow, what a blessing that it didn't happen at that time because maybe life isn't where it needed to be at that point. Maybe I wasn't specifically ready. Maybe I hadn't been in a position where I had developed the skills for that next level, and that's exactly where I'm at now in the sense of I am so grateful that I had that seven years of leadership.
Sometimes you look back and you go, wow, I didn't realize the exposure to, I had to do particular roles to particular experiences were really preparing for that next step in life.
It may not have happened when I wanted it to, but it ended up happening exactly when it needed to be.
We've all been through journeys of ups and downs, twists and turns, highs and lows, and essentially when you break it down and you say, this was the experience. Here goes what I learned from that experience and here goes what I'll do differently in the future.
Here goes what I'll share with someone else because we know sharing is caring, but how often do we take those “failures”, I'll call them learnings and share those learnings with the next generation.
We've been a part of a mastermind and what I appreciate from the Mastermind is the ability for us to communicate, to share wins, losses, what we're learning, and, and to really support each other, challenge each other, and, uh, really help elevate each other to that next level.
It's absolutely amazing to have that network and community.
Being an entrepreneur, whether people are in entrepreneurship or not, I've invested a lot in coaches and in all areas of my business, and I wish I had done that earlier in my career because the growth that I've experienced professionally and personally within the past two and a half years since I started my business is exponential because of the guide between masterminds, between relationships, between the coaches that I've invested in, and between the leadership programs.
Silver Lining of Failures
When I didn't get the deal, when I didn't get the business, when the door was shut on me, and actually the customers that there was the most conflict with strengthened me as a better sales representative and ended up being, if I was able to repair that relationship, ended up being my most loyal customers ever.
I think back to most of the stories that I talk about in my leadership development program. It's all about the failures that I had as a manager and saying, here's what I did, here's what I learned, and here's what I would do differently.
So I'm grateful for some of those failures, even though they were hard to go through at the time, but they shaped me into understanding where leaders can do things right and differently.
And the thing about “failure” is that you're trying.
So often, folks are paralyzed due to fear of failure, and I've been there before. They don't want to pursue it. In regards to coaching, entrepreneurship, or even working in corporate, wherever you are. There are benefits to mentorship, coaching, investing, and up-leveling your skills and experiences.
I love experiential retreats, it just provides just so much learning, interaction, and networking that you would really have to be intentional to not learn and not take something away.
So certainly wanna make sure those listeners that are working in corporate today also realize the benefits of coaching, of mentorship, because you can learn in two ways.
You can learn from your own mistakes. I've got a lot of knots in my head because I'm hard-headed of just making mistakes on my own.
You can learn from mentors who have already made the mistakes on your behalf and are willing to share if you ask.
Giving Yourself Grace
Middle management is sometimes babysitting adults is what it feels like sometimes. And so it's not as attractive a role as it used to be.
In fact, a lot of people that have had middle management positions are going back into individual contributor roles because they like to be kind of in control of what they do, not responsible for other people and the pressures that go along with it and the emotional drain because you're trying to navigate through so many different personalities.
No matter what you plan on doing in your career, always invest in developing new skills.
Invest in becoming an expert at what you do, whether that be through a mentor, a sponsor, leadership programs, or masterminds.
I think some people say the sky's the limit, survey says, nah, I don't believe there is any limit. The only limits out there are the ones that we put on ourselves.
I know that sometimes people get stuck in ruts. Sometimes we believe the hype of what other people are saying.
But when you start talking about yours
Why don't you give yourself grace?
Why don't you lift yourself up?
Encourage yourself like you do everyone else. I can tell you that it's made a world of difference.
Some might call it a failure, but you know what? Dust yourself off. It's okay. Let's get them next.
Rise up to your purpose, not society's expectations, not how you think that you should be or shouldn't be. What is your purpose? What is your dream? And rise up to it.
We all have the opportunity to write our own story.
We get to set that, and yes, we can have outside influences, but ultimately, right here in our hearts and minds, with the words we speak and the words we write, we can determine where we want to go, which allows us to put together a plan on how I am going to get there.
So many times we dream small because we know that that's safe. It's comfortable. It feels so good in my comfort zone, but sometimes we gotta break out.
We gotta step out.
Ask Yourself the Toughest Question
You have an exercise where you talk about discovering your dream. So for our listeners out there, what are some questions they can ask themselves to discover what their dream is, to discover what their purpose is, and put together that plan to put into action?
If money wasn't a thing, what would you be doing? Think about that now. Why would you be doing that? What's your purpose? What are your mission, your vision, and your core values? Who do you want to impact? Who do you want to serve?
Tony Robbins says the most successful people ask the toughest questions; therefore, they get the best answers. So I just encourage everyone, all, each and every one of your listeners and viewers, to ask themselves the tough questions. It can be tough to ask yourself these questions, but it really leads to growth. It leads to a place that we're all trying to get to.
