Speaker 1:

Welcome to today’s episode of David VS Goliath, a podcast dedicated to helping small businesses leverage technology to not only help them compete against their large competitors, but win. Your host is currently the CEO of Anthem Business Software, a free time Inc 500 recipient and a serial entrepreneur with a passion to help small businesses everywhere find, serve, and keep more customers profitably. Please join me in welcoming your host, Adam Degraide.

Adam Degraide:

Hey everyone, it’s Adam Degraide with the David VS Goliath podcast, back to back podcast I’m doing this morning with my Bearded Man mug. Many of you who turned in last week, you learned about belief and how essential I believe it is informing our own lives. It was informing our country, it is informing our businesses belief is essential. If you missed it, go back and check it out.

It’s really early in the morning here. I just got up and said I got to go do this, and so here I am doing it and I’m excited. Next week we’re going back to our long format interviews for the next few weeks and can’t wait for that as well too. Well, today’s episode is brought to us, not by The Bearded Man company, mug company, but by automatemysocial.com, where you can automate up to 100% of your business is social media and never have to think about it again. Set it, forget it, and save time and money. Visit automatemysocial.com. Also, visit us online at davidvsgoliathpodcast.com. There you can subscribe to receive our newsletter and apply to be on the podcast. Well, let’s get right to it, after I have a sip.

Last week we talked about belief and how anything truly great and worthwhile starts with one word, and that’s belief. Coupled with belief though is vision. So when you think about it, how do you have a vision for your personal life and in your business as well too? I think about the founding fathers who came here, they left the oppression, they had a vision for something better and they believed that they were the ones to achieve that goal to the point of them even sacrificing their own lives for our freedom today.

Same thing is true in business, by the way. So you’re an entrepreneur and so you have a business, or you’ve inherited a business, and you believe you can take it over and run it. Or you believe you have a vision to start one, and you go ahead and you start it and then belief starts to wane and starts to fade. And what do you do to rekindle it? Well, one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever heard in my life was a sermon that I heard years ago. It was a youth convention. I must have been 18, 19 years old, and for full disclosure, I’m almost 52, and so it’s many years ago, but it stuck to me to this day. And so if you’re out there, whoever did this series, the series was called Dragon Slayer, which is kind of funny. But it was at the time it worked and it was called Dragon Slayer and it was how to slay your own dragons in your own life.

Well, it’s kind of funny because here I am running a podcast how to slay your own giants in your own life. It’s really not that much different, David vs Goliath. The story of David and Goliath is about slaying giants and slaying the dragon, and we all have them when we all face them. And he got up there and he said, “I believe …” And he was like very passionate, the whole thing, handkerchief, wiping the forehead. And he said, “I believe that God has brought some of you kids here,” And I was a kid at the time, “because you have a plan, he has a vision, he wants you to prosper, he wants you to do well. He wants you to be the best version of yourself you possibly can be.” And he said, “God gives you a vision,” he goes, “the problem is the world.” And what he said, “The dragon wants to steal it from you, wants to rip that vision so you stop going in the direction that you’re supposed to go in.”

And man, that really impacted me. And so, one of the pieces of advice that he gave and illustrations that he gave, it’s like, okay, so on a sunny day you could see the sun, and you’re walking, and all of a sudden a fog rolls in, and the clouds roll in, and you can’t see where the sun is anymore. He said, “Just keep walking in that same direction and before you know it, the clouds will lift and you’ll see the sunshine again.” And I thought about that even in my own personal life and in my business life. So often in times in my life I know I’m supposed to do something, and so you start to move in that direction and then challenges and clouds and the fog rolls in your own life and you get lost. And so, one of the most critical things you need to do is to keep walking in that direction where you saw the sun last.Because it will happen, there will come a time where the clouds will rise, the fog will lift, and you’ll see the sun again.

And it’s always impacted me to this day. And that really comes down to vision. Well, in your business, and I’m dealing with this right now, by the way, personally in my own business, how do I go through moments of doubt and keep moving in faith? Well now I’ve done so much over the years that now I just do it. I think it’s just sheer instinct and will to keep moving forward. And so even if I’m discouraged, I still get up and I do the same things I’ve always done to move my business forward, to do the best you can to move it forward. Sometimes it’s not moving because of you, sometimes it’s not moving because it’s not supposed to move yet. Other times it’s not moving because your team doesn’t believe and they’re not doing the things. But it doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, you’ve been given a vision, you started something, you’re moving forward, we’re going forward, and you just keep moving in that direction and eventually the clouds will lift, the sun will shine when you least expect it. I promise you it happens. It’s happened every single time in my life as long as I’ve stayed consistent.

And when we come back, I want to talk to you about consistency, and we’re going to take a break right now from a very important message from Automatemysocial. We’ll be right back.

Speaker 1:

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Adam Degraide:

And we’re back with Adam Degraide and consistency. We’re going to chat about that really quick. But all of this ties into stories that I’ve learned over the years that blow me away. So the sermon about the dragon slayer and how God’s given us all a vision to move forward in our personal lives and in our professional lives, I really believe that. And you just got to keep moving in the direction of where the sun shines. Well, sometimes you can’t get lost. The story of Hansel and Gretel, we’ve heard that before. Another sermon I heard many years ago as a young man. These impacts, see pastors and teachers, and schools, and people that are telling stories to kids, you do have an impact and you do change people’s lives, and I’m living proof of it.

Here I am, 30 years later, never forgetting these sermons that changed my life. And coupled with the keep walking in the sun direction was a sermon I heard about how when something significant happens in your life in business or in your personal life, you want to put a boulder in your mind, a marker that says, we did this, I’ve been there and I can do it again. Because when the time comes when you get lost, and it will absolutely happen, you can always go back to that rock and continue your journey from there. And the rock being the memory that we did this, it’s happened before, it’s going to happen again. Let’s go back to that place of faith, back to that place of belief, couple it with the vision and continue to march forward through the fog and through the haze, and the sun will break and you will absolutely achieve what you’re supposed to be achieving in life.

These are critical things, and I’ll never forget the life lesson that I learned in business from J.E. Wolfington. He literally took out a picture of an acorn and he said, “Everything the tree will ever be in this acorn is in the acorn, as big as the tree will be, as healthy, healthy as it’ll be, as long as it’ll live is all in there, in that acorn.” And each of us are in acorn ourselves. And he looked at me, and my buddy Sean Wolfington at the time, and he said, “Hey boys, your business will only ever be as big as you think it can be, and you will only be as successful in your personal lives as you think you can be, because the acorn of belief is essential for the growth of anything healthy.”

And it really just impacted me in a major way as a young man, once again. To this day when discouragement hits me, don’t forget the belief you have. Don’t forget the vision you have. One of the things I did in my last business is I put an actual price tag that I wanted to sell the business for eventually, and it was within $50,000, literally within $50,000. Oh, by the way, it was $50,000 more, but at least it wasn’t in the opposite direction, but it was a lot of money and it was very grateful. And so this last venture we just started, I have an even bigger number on it, and this one’s been a challenge and it’s tough, but we’re growing, but we’re growing slower than my other ones, but we’re still going in that direction. Why? Because anything truly great and worthwhile like we talked about last week, starts with belief.

Then you have to couple that with vision that you have to continue to walk in that direction. And then the acorn of belief, the acorn of mirroring the belief and the vision together into that one powerful entity, what I call the acorn principle, is how big it can be and how big you can see it. And you can’t give up on it. When the clouds fall and the haze arrives, keeps moving in that direction because eventually the sun will shine and it will lift, and then your vision will come true. But it’s never going to happen if you quit. It’s never going to happen if we give up. It’s never going to happen if we fall into the trap of doubt or fear or anxiety. Keep moving in the direction you’re called to move in. You have a vision, you all have greatness in you. You have something that you can contribute to the earth and into your family, to your neighborhood and your community. Do it because that’s why you’re here. You’re here. Your vision, your belief, and your vision mirror into the acorn of what your life will look like, what your business will look like.

And I really hope you guys are enjoying these short versions of this. I really like talking about these things, and if you don’t, let me know. But if you do, let me know. It’s important. Send me a direct message or leave me a comment on these videos. Be sure to subscribe. Link it, tweet it, share it. This is another episode of the David VS Goliath podcast in the can. Back to the long form interviews next week. Thanks for tuning in, we’ll see you then.