I make it no secret that I AM AN ENTREPRENEUR with a deep passion for health and wellness.
Like a lot of health bloggers, it took me a long time to fully embrace the business side of things — the marketing, the sales, the networking, the fears.
It’s been quite a journey, but I can honestly say that I have the best job in the world. I read books, interview the authors, and have the privilege of helping people all over the world overcome their health issues.
It’s a pretty sweet gig. And YOU make it possible.
My entrepreneurial journey began when I was maybe six-years-old. Like clockwork, the latest issue of my father’s Entrepreneur Magazine would arrive in our mailbox each month, addressed to Fred Lee Croxton.
A hardworking man and Korean War vet with abilities that went well above and beyond his limited education, my father prized his stacks of business publications — Fortune, Black Enterprise, and the one that fascinated me the most, Entrepreneur Mag.
Of course, as a He-Man-watching, WWF-loving kid, it wasn’t the articles I found so intriguing, but the title itself.
“There is no reason in 2008 to do ((stuff)) you hate.”
Of all of the personal development and business talks I’ve ever watched, this simple and slightly-profane declaration from one Gary Vaynerchuk six years ago probably had the most lasting impact on the direction I would take in my life.
Because life is way too short to spend one-third of our waking hours doing intolerable ((stuff)) that numbs our spirit in exchange for “security”.
((______)) that…
I know what you’re thinking: The economy isn’t what it used to be, Sean.
I couldn’t agree with you more. And that’s because the economy isn’t what it used to be.
We are no longer living in the days of our grandparents, when a high school diploma punched your ticket to a job at the factory.
Or the days when a college education imparted at least some assurance that a job was waiting on the other side of the commencement stage.
Nope, those factory jobs are on the other side of the ocean. And the college grad has been replaced by the electronic voice that asks me what I want but can’t understand me when I say it and then hangs up on me, but not without that aggravating “goodbye”.
The days we are living in today are the ones when a guy writes an e-book on teaching a parrot how to talk and becomes a millionaire.
Maybe it pushes them too far out of their comfort zone — just a bit too much reality from the podcast guy, I guess.
But this needs to be said.
When I was a diet and lifestyle coach, my job was to look for and find the root cause(s) of health conditions — digestive problems, low libido, poor memory and brain fog, weight gain, you name it.
Working one-on-one with real people for several years, a practitioner begins to see patterns, or common denominators, amongst his clients.
Of course there are the more obvious trends — eating the wrong foods and not making the time for exercise.
Yet the trend that showed up repeatedly was a pervasive sense of apathy for how my clients earned their livings.
In other words, they hated their jobs.
In fact, many barely knew their own children due to their jam-packed schedules. Intimate relationships were falling apart. Debt was rising. To earn more, they had to work more.