396 | Overcoming Challenges – To Hell and Back

Part of leadership is overcoming challenges. You will face tough times, and they will make you a better leader. Today I share with you my to hell and back story. It is all about overcoming challenges. I want you to know you are not alone and that you can overcome challenges when they come your way.

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Overcoming Challenges: The Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.

Yesterday, I was giving a speech for someone about leadership and about how to activate fast growth inside the company. We had a great time, I shared everything I could, and I shared a piece of my story that I don’t normally tell.

After the speech was over, the leader of that company came to me and said, you know, what you’ve talked about there, a lot of people aren’t strong enough to talk about and I think you should share more of it. You’ve been to hell and back, is what he said, and I laughed and I said, yeah, I have.

My story about creating this new business is not new, but I feel like I really haven’t done the best job sharing exactly what I’ve been through to get to where I am. This is just a brief overview of where I’ve come from and where I am now, and I share this with you so that you could actually grow your leadership. We’ve all been through tough times. Mine was just something I had to go through to be who I am today.

I was running a five million dollar a year business. I had seven or eight employees at a time and I was helping them grow as individuals. I was growing that company, but I wasn’t completely satisfied with who I was. I wanted to do something more, but I never would let myself do it. I didn’t have the courage. It really kinda pains me to even say that, but there were times when I was holding back because I was comfortable.

Now, when I ended up losing everything, I had a bad business deal where I lost three million dollars. Everything changed for me. I got more perspective about where I was going, how I was acting day in and day out, and what I could do to change and create the life I wanted.

That story is in my book, The Trap of Success, but what I’m really talking about here is I was trapped by my success. I was trapped by the money that I was creating and about the lifestyle that I created for the business. I loved what I was doing, so I share this with you because I want you to think about where you are today and about how you could be missing something that’s right there in front of you because I had to lose everything to look back at it.

Losing three million dollars was something that provided that perspective, but it also was painful. It was an obstacle I had to overcome. I had to truly engage something completely different than I had ever done before and that was scary because I had to shift everything about who I thought I was.

See, losing that money was more than just losing the business, and losing the money, and the income that was coming in on a regular basis. I lost my house, but I also lost my confidence and that was something I had to rebuild.

That journey back wasn’t something that took a few weeks or a few months even. It took years. It took a while for me to really understand and forgive who needed to be forgiven. The real core here behind this was it wasn’t about me forgiving the person who took the money from me, but I had to forgive myself because I had trusted wholeheartedly into that and I was left holding this bag of crap, if you will, to hell and back and I could not see that, in front of my face, what was going on. I really did have to forgive myself.

There was something that happened around six months, but that was the start of it. I think it took a full two or three years for me to truly know that I had to go through something that horrific to be the person I am today because going through the hell and back allowed me to see where I was weak and where I needed to be strong. It allowed me to see what I was focused on and why that was not exactly what needed to happen. It allowed me to see that I was chasing success. What I really wanted was significance.

I wrote the book, The Trap of Success, to help me understand what the difference between chasing success and the significance would be if I actually shifted that and made sure that they, they play together or dance together if you will. If you have success and significance going together, you have something really powerful in your work and that’s where I am today. I advise companies and high-growth leaders about how to grow their companies. That’s what I do, but I transform leaders to go beyond what they believe is possible, that’s who I am.

That statement really lights me up when I share it with you because I get to show you a part of me. I’m not hiding that I wasn’t enough at the time. I’m actually laying it out there. I had to grow through that. I’m curious, what did you have to grow through? What did you have to endure to really understand how to grow yourself so that you can grow your company?

My name’s Gene Hammett. This message is just a little excerpt from The Trap of Success, the book I love to share with you. If you have any interest in that book, just go to Amazon, you can check it out. Click on the link here. You can get details about what business I was in, how I lost the money, but more importantly, how I rebuilt my life and how you can rebuild your life with a clear vision, overcoming the fear, and really creating significance inside the work that you do. Take care. As always, lead with courage.

Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.

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