This article was originally published in San Diego's Life By Design, February 2018 Edition
What’s LOVE got to do with it? Entrepreneurship, that is..
While I’ve been an entrepreneur and thought leader my entire life, my immigration to America in 2015 forced me to start over. I had to become a student in every way to start a new life and a new iteration of my business.
As I listened to the endless webinars from gurus, alleged millionaires, and millennial moguls (I say that with love), there were two themes that kept coming up over and over again: hustle and value.
Let’s play the age-old game of ‘Truth or Dare’ to illustrate the discovery that has radically transformed my approach to (and success in) entrepreneurship and life, and the two questions that changed everything!
As a kid, I’d always pick truth first…
THE TRUTH
By definition, 'hustle' is forceful action, persuasion, coercion, pressure, or busy movement (and those are the most positive of the definitions).
Value is defined as perceived worth, merit and importance.
Are we being fooled into loving the hustle of entrepreneurship?
Should we love measuring ourselves against the perception of others?
It occurs to me, when you operate from hustle and 'adding value,' you are always in scarcity mode - and I can’t take a stand for you being in LOVE with either. In fact, I invite you to refuse both!
It was during my tenure as head of a high school music department for nearly ten years (the most challenging entrepreneurial journey of my life to date) that I made a huge discovery (one I only began to implement for myself after I realized neither hustle nor value were values that created positive, sustainable success in my life).
Working with high school music students meant that I had to find some constructive way of ‘providing value’ and feedback on (we’re playing truth, remember) mostly hideous performances on beaten up instruments from students who were often taking music because it was a ‘bird course’ (so, hustle was not a high priority).
The discovery was these two simple questions I would ask myself to structure feedback:
What do I love?
What would I love more of?
Feedback based on these questions allowed me to encourage improvement, build confidence, celebrate success, and to inspire students to be intrinsically inspired. Who wouldn’t want more of that!?
The bigger discovery came when I applied these questions to my own development as an entrepreneur in this country. EVERYTHING changed; abundance, success, and even fun have become the new normal.
THE DARE
Start and end every day, task, project, call and interaction by asking yourself what you love and what you’d love more of. Ask the same of others, too - your clients, friends, and loved ones.
You’ll not only start to see that love is closely tied to success, but that it is an infallible force that will carry you to your greatest heights as an entrepreneur, thought leader, and beyond!
Go on, I love dare you!
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