What does it mean to be an advocate? It's when you publicly support a policy or laws or a movement. Be your own policy. Be your own procedure. Be your own movement. Stand up for yourself. How are you showing up? And that's what it means to be your own advocate. It means to show up in the best possible way that you can. We're going to talk about entrepreneurship and I know this is weird, it could be weird if you're not an entrepreneur.
When I retire from the military, it's been five years now. When I got out in December of 2015, the thirty first of December of 2015 was my last active duty day so when 2016 popped off, I was a regular civilian but when I got out, I struggled like many people. I mean, I'd been in 22 years my God, it's like my entire youth.
I really struggled, but I always had been interested in and still am interested in real estate, so I had been reading and learning about real estate the whole time I was in the military BUT I never did anything about it. I never brought a property. I never flip the property. I'd never wholesale anything. Now, I had a townhouse and so I had rented it out and had a rental property.
But as far as like intentionally having a flip or doing this for a whole moneymaking strategy, I hadn't done it yet, so I was like, you know what? I'm doing it. I'm getting into it and I needed something because I was missing a big part of structure. I was missing a big part of community - missing a part of being around people. I was just missing a really big part of my life when I left the military, I was looking for something to fill that space, so I just decided that I'm going to start doing Wholesaling. Why? it's the easiest to do, it's the lowest barrier in the market, you don't really need any money or anything and I had already taken some classical stuff before. I am going to start calling people, then put this stuff on Craigslist but this is what happens. I started meeting people at houses. I started having conversations with people about what they wanted, about their intentions for their house, what they wanted to do, why they were selling it. How did that need me to help them, asking questions, questions. questions. questions, questions. It wasn't about me line them up with a whole bunch of questions. It was about me listening.
So when I stepped into entrepreneurship, I was forced to step outside of the person who I thought I was. I was forced to step outside of being Captain Gordon. I had been in the military all this time. I was enlisted. I was all of these things that I had built up and who I honestly was but when I stepped into this space of wholesaling. It made me, it forced me, it demanded me to show up differently.
It demanded that I was able to listen and learn how I could be a part of people’s solutions, about not taking advantage of people and it really forced me. It really taught me how to be a better communicator. It really taught me how to be a better problem solver and really learn how to listen in solutions. Now, why this is pretty awesome? Whenever people tell me stuff, I want to fix it because I hear you giving me a to do list but I learned, I honed that by listening to regular people that were not in the military. Now, I already knew how to go into a meeting and come back with a task, with a to do list, but to be able to associate that with people and being able to (1) listen. Listening in a way that is authentic and I know that's a word that we're like throwing around, but listening in a way that you can help and I really learned how to talk and listen to people through entrepreneurship and it didn't just help the people whose I was trying to help them wholesale their houses, it didn't just help them - it helped to me. When you step into entrepreneurship, you just have to be a different kind of person. You have to shed away things that you thought you knew about people, things that you thought you knew about yourself and just be open to do and learn what works. So you're forced to listen and if you're smart not just smart, but mature to know that if it's something that you've never done before, then you're going to need someone to help you. So number two (2) is you need to have a mentor, a coach, and maybe you can't afford that or you're not ready to dive all the way into that so that means listening at YouTube videos, listening to things like these walking talks that I do, getting these nuggets, getting Ebooks, audio books, all of those things contribute to your greater success, greater healing and your greater transformations. And then the last thing, because I'm just going to give you three (3) it really opens you up to be healed because I use and had been unknowingly at the beginning. I had to use entrepreneurship as a form of therapy because when you're trying to do all these things-how to help people, how to show up, try to show up, trying to do all of these things and now you're listening. You're setting goals. You're doing all of these things that are making you better because when you're reaching out to help someone heal, to help someone be a better version of themselves, that rubs off on you and that ends making you a different kind of person.
What is Entrepreneurship?
There's a whole where you are a full time entrepreneur, your full fledge working for yourself, but then there's other ways, then there's part time entrepreneur, so that could be you're already retired, you already have income coming in and you don't necessarily need or want to do it - do entrepreneurship or something that you love as a 9-5, but you love it. You love helping people, you love coaching, you love helping people develop their website, you love being a project manager, you love being an operational manager. You want to do this in spaces where the government, but you only want to do these things part time. That's still an entrepreneur, but then there's parts of where you can be an entrepreneur in small, little, tiny little doses, and those are micro entrepreneurs. That could be something like you have a BnB. Now, this this example may not be all that relevant right now, depending on where you live but if you have an AirBnB, that is still entrepreneurship, you may be saying that that's a side hustle but that micro entrepreneurship a so that, too, is also entrepreneurship. It could be that you have a rental house or you rent out, the mother law flat that's in the back of your house or your pool house. That is entrepreneurship. and there's also all these small ways you help people with their resumes but you just do that in a small way. So that's micro entrepreneurship. But then there's entrepreneurship. So, you're inside of your corporation and you are using your entrepreneurial skills. You're using your creativity to be able to help your current employer with their bottom line. You're helping them to create new trainings, new products, new programs and you're doing that within your current organization - that, too, is entrepreneurship. So you may think that, oh, I'm that entrepreneur. Oh, you're not talking to me. I'm talking to you. Doing that is a way to not just help you get more money, because that's definitely something cool and awesome. It's also a way to help you grow, help you heal, help you listen, help you be a better version of yourself. It also helps you show up, so consider, think about how can entrepreneurship be a healer for you? How can you use entrepreneurship to become the best version of yourself where you can not only stand up for yourself, but you stand up for other people?
This one is the one that has really helped and continues to help and it continues to push me to always be looking to become a better version of myself. So I have a coach, you know, just looking to do things better and bigger and show up better and bigger. And it's a way for you to be able, a way for us to be able to serve at a higher level and be able to help at a higher level because if you can't help or heal or stand up for yourself, you're not going to be able to stand up helping someone else.
