UNCHURCHED #328 - 5 Questions That Will Alter Your Life...

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Welcome to the Salt Strong podcast disrupting fishing entertainment as you know it. Prepare to laugh, prepare to get to know fishing legends in a whole new and unfiltered way. And on occasion, you might even learn a thing or two about fishing. Here's your host, Joe Simons.

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Like diamonds, the five questions to change your life. I'm talking fulfillment, money, peace, happiness, whatever is important to you. Success. All looks different, everyone. But these questions could literally change your life. Hey everybody. Joe Simons, Lake Diamonds. Back again with Salt Strong Unchurched. I just had an amazing four day trip with my son Jackson. He is going to a new camp up in North Carolina. The camp last year where our daughters go to is very rustic. And the irony is our daughters, especially Shawna, loves that stuff. And I'm talking, you know, these cabins, they've been there longer than most of the. You guys listening are alive. Unless you happen to be, you know, probably over 85. These things have been there for, for almost a century. You know, just imagine old school cabins like you see in the, in the old movies. It looks just like that. And so these cabins, I mean, you get, you can see the ground. You know, there's cracks and there's no ac. Some of them have electricity, meaning they'll have at least an outlet where you could, you know, plug in a little small fan. But for the most part, these are just huge outhouses that don't happen to have poop in them because they have real outhouses next to them. Literally my daughter just, they're going to outhouse for six weeks. It is just, you know, the next level, I guess, above primitive camping, but not that different. Different. The girls love it. Jackson did not like it. He really did not like the fact there were no screens in, in the boys cabins. Some of the cabins have some screens, some don't. So not only do you have cracks in the floor where you can see the ground and you got bugs coming up, I mean, you just got spiders. You're out in the woods, you got everything coming in creeping on you at nighttime. Personally, at my age, I'm not a fan of that either. So I, I, I get them. So we're trying a new camp this year that actually has screens on their, on their little cabins and bit, I would say a little bit nicer. So all that being said, I got to go travel around. We drove up from Winter Haven up to North Carolina and my son really loves just digging and, and just kind of everything outdoors with rocks and boulders and rivers and building dams and just, just he's so curious by it. And so he wanted to go dig for gold. And North Carolina is. Was the number one place in the country for, for finding gold and in gold mines until California came along and overtook it, but still really kind of the number two state. I mean, tons and tons literally of gold have been dug out from North Carolina. Same with emeralds. And we did that, ended up doing a little private prospector tour and found gold. It was really, really cool. Really, really special. I tell you all this to say one, I'm just getting off of a really fun trip and it was very fulfilling to have that time. You know, our time on this life is short. I've talked about it before and I've been just kind of so busy. I haven't done that. And I know we've even talked about it. And when I say done that meaning just taking time to do a four or five day trip with, with one of the kids because they do grow up fast and all of a sudden they're driving like my daughter, daughter, daughter Shauna will be next year. And once they drive, they don't. Teenagers don't want to hang around their parents and their other boring siblings. They want to go out and about and explore the world. And I get it. I did the exact same thing. Just trying to get some of these trips in with the kids while I can. It was just a special moment. I mean, just doing dad stuff and going to eating horrible at Waffle House and Cracker barrels and stuff along the way and telling stories and going down rivers and building dams and stuff. It was just a blast. While we were driving, Jackson was. He actually just reads his books. He's not an iPad kid. I don't know how we got blessed with, with, with that one because the other two would be stuck on an iPad the whole time. But he didn't do any electro the entire four days, if you can believe it. He just loves reading and being outside and so he read. And I was doing some podcasting and I have a wide range of podcasts. I listen to a lot of business stuff, anything that talks about happiness or purpose. And this one came into my feed that I hadn't really listened to. He's more of a real estate guy, Tom Ferry. If you guys are in real estate, you probably have heard his name. I guess he's a pretty big deal. But he had a podcast that came into my feed called how to discover your purpose and I was going to skip it at first because I didn't really know who Tom Ferry was. Great podcast I listened to a couple of other ones because he does, once again, mostly real estate, but a lot of stuff on just finding happiness and overall wealth building and things like that. And I'm still interested in real estate as well. But it was these five questions that he had a coach or a mentor, Mike Vance, who was also a coach to Walt Disney and Steve Jobs and friends with, you know, Jack Welch and like new, like Mother Teresa connection. Like just crazy stuff, right? And he's like, all these people, this is Mike Vance talking, had one thing in common that they had all answered. These five, they called them these fundamental questions. And the wording might change a little bit by a word or two, but it's really the exact same questions. Like all five of them of these people, Disney, Steve Jobs, Jack Welch, Mother Teresa, these super successful and you would call driven, happy, fulfilled, whatever you want to call them, people had answered these five questions. I'm kind of listening maybe like, you are. And I was like, all right, what are they? So, number one, they all answered, what is their purpose? Like, why are they on this planet? And that's not an easy one. None of these are simple. And it could be as simple like, you know, Steve Jobs is to, you know, have connect the the world through computers or whatever is Walt Disney, to put a smile on people's faces in theme parks or through movies or whatever it might be. And you don't have to impact millions or even thousands of people. Some it could just be to be the. The best wife and spouse at home for five kids. You know, assuming you have five kids ever and you're just impacting these and getting these five kids prepared for the world and being a housemaker, there's nothing wrong with that. That could be an amazing purpose. But just answer that. That's just question one. So these do get easier, which is better? And the other ones kind of tie in to number one. Now, most people hadn't even taken that. And he was very clear to say, like I've repeated before, to write these down. Don't just say it in your head. There's something powerful about writing these down. And all those people, these successful, written their answers down to these questions. Number one, what is their purpose? Why are they on this planet? What. What gets them excited every morning? What. What are they doing? And number two ties in with it. What are your values? What are your values? Your core beliefs, Your. Your kind of line in the sand? I don't do this, or I do do this. It. I can't tell you how important it has Been for us, it's salt strong. And even just personally having these core values, these core beliefs, whatever you want to call them, and they could be 2, 3, 5, 10, I would say less is more. You know, 3 to 3 to 5 is probably ideal. But when you have those and you have them written down, you are going to get bombarded with opportunities, requests to do things every single day, sometimes every hour. And if you don't know what you value, like what's important to you, you don't know what to say, yes or no to that in itself is super powerful. Very insightful.

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Like one of ours at Saltstrong was to create wow. And so creating WOW just means going above and beyond. I would say Apple, Disney fits that. And so when you have an opportunity to cut cost, right, when someone comes and says, hey, you know, we could stop doing this because it's going to save us a ton of money. And I'm not saying the answer should always just be no, we have to overspend. But when you put it through that litmus test of, well, our, our core belief, what we truly believe in, like what we'll die for, is that we create wow. Is this going to harm that or tremendously cut back on? And I'll just give you an example. We got proposed the opportunity to take customer service abroad, right? To use more AI and customer service and take it to international countries, let's just say other countries, like a lot of banks and probably half, way more than half, I would say maybe 80% of companies you call these days, right? You get someone in Mumbai or Pakistan or whatever and you know they're not American. You know, that company has only done that because they wanted to cut costs and save money and it doesn't create wow. You're talking to someone, you barely understand their dialect and they don't understand yours. And it's super frustrating. And we were like, no, that, that goes completely against our core beliefs. Our core beliefs is to create wow. And we believe talking to a real life human who's a full time employee, you know, because that's another way you can cut cost is getting a staffing company that answers phones for lots of different companies and they're just reading off a script, yeah, that could be a way to cut some costs. But because we have a written down core value or core belief that says we create wow and we love on our members and do everything possible to wow them, we would never in a million years consider that. But if we didn't have that written down, it honestly might have hey, cool. Yeah, it's a good way to save money. Let's do it. So that's just one of many, many examples of what happen when you have written down values and for you personally they might not be things like, you know, create wow. You know, another one of ours is move uncomfortably fast. We've changed them over the years. One was just, you know, family first. And that could be a good one for a family that, hey, no matter what happens, I'm going to make decisions and kind of have a filter that my family is first or God first or whatever it is for you. So incredibly important to, to have those, those values written down and thought out. So number three, all of them understood their God given talents. We've talked about that before and all that means is they knew that what they knew at least one thing that they were best at. And that doesn't have to mean best in the world. I don't think any of those people were even these Steve Jobs and Walt Disney could say they were absolutely best in the world. They were one of the best in the world at certain things that they did. But even then there's always someone who might slightly better gift than you. But for instance, if you know you're really good at getting in front of a camera or in front of an audience or selling or vice versa, you're really good about getting behind a computer and doing accounting. Those are two completely different people. Those are two completely different sets of strengths. Like, I know I'm pretty good about talking. I can sit here and talk to you guys, you know, without a guest for 20, 30 minutes every single week. It's not a problem for me. There's many people that were like, I don't even know how I'd get past two or three minutes. Even if I had a guest with me. It might be tough. Yet I struggled getting in front of a computer or an Excel sheet and doing budgeting and things like that. The operations part, I really, really struggle with it. I think I could get it just like I would say the person who's great at that could get in front of an audience if they practice enough and tried enough. I just, it gives me zero excitement, it gives me zero strength and it, it drains me more than anything else. So all that being said is, you know, find out those talents or talent. It could just be one thing that you are best in the world at and then don't do anything else. Right. I think why those people were, and we all know their names is because they were so good at Spending the majority of their days focused on what they're best at getting r of everything else, meaning surrounding themselves with people or systems or processes of. Of. Of things that can complement their weaknesses. And then they took off. Crazy. All right, so number four is they all answer the question, what's the dent that they're making in this universe? And. And what does their Life look like 20 years from now? So what's the dent they're making in. In the universe? And I think so many people, even as I heard this, I struggled with it, and I feel like we're making a dent in the universe. And, like, I'm still like. Well, compared to, like, Walt Disney or Steve Jobs or Mother Teresa, I'm not. And that's not the point. You're not ever trying to compare yourself to anyone else. That's. I think that's the. Where we slip up. We're comparing ourselves to us, to who God created us to be. And God did give us all certain talents and a certain vision, things that he wants us to adhere by. And I think the worst thing that we could do is waste that and not recognize it or just kind of put it off to the side and say, yeah, I'll. Maybe I'll focus on that. On that later. So what is that question? What. What. You know what. What are your talents and what is that dent that you're trying to make in this universe, even? And I'm not saying only if you're watching and raising five kids, because that is a job in and of itself, but that's making a dent in this universe. I mean, what if one of those kids go be the next Steve Jobs or Walt Disney or whatever, or even just an awesome teacher or whatever. It happens to be someone who's making a dent and an impact in this. This world. So that is number four. And number five, who would I be if I was already there? Boom. This is like that mic drop. And when I heard I had to rewind, I was like, what do you mean? Who would I be if I was already there? Meaning if all those other four things were true, who would I be today if I was already there? Or let's just say you're not there yet, because most of us aren't. Or if any of us are. Why are you listening to this podcast? You should be running your own. So let's just assume it's 20 years from now, 10 years from now. Are you that person, the one that we just described here, Knowing your talents and your gifts and your purpose and all that, how do you show up? How do you dress? How do you communicate with others? How do you show up for other people? How do you show up for your loved ones? How do you love on people? That's powerful stuff. And when we got acquired, the CEO of Winquest, super bright guy. Winquest is the main group that owns now Coursera and us, et cetera. And obviously they have a CEO of that that's running a lot of the other companies that they own. And he was asking us our goals for Saltstrong and the Insider Club and all the things, the theme park, all that stuff. And he asked me a question that I never forgot it because no one had ever really asked me that way. He's like, all right. He goes, I love everything you're saying. I was basically describing the future, just like I'm asking you to do of thinking ahead of where you want to be. And he goes, all right, if all that's going to happen, what has to happen today? What is the truth today? What do we have to change for you to be that sort of leader in this company, to look like that in five years from now? I was like, boom. Because a lot of us just put these goals out there, right? Oh, we're going to grow the club and have a theme park and all this, this cool stuff that very few of us, including me, I really had to think about it, you know, have thought down, like, all right, what has to be true today? What has to be true even a year from now? And he kept pushing me, he's like, I. Because I kept answering the questions, right, what has to be true three years from now for us to hit this five year goal, like, where do we have to be right, begin with in mind? And I was like, man, that's so true. And when you start dialing it back to today, you're like, all right, if I just keep going down the same path and showing up for others the same way I am today and doing the same thing and the same routines and the same habits, same everything, I'm probably not going to get there. And that's when it's really eye opening. When you have all this stuff written down of where you want to be and it doesn't even matter one year, three years, five years, 20 years. Obviously it's going to be different depending on who you are and how much longer you're going to live, all that stuff comes into play. But at some point you have to backtrack him. Like, all right, if that's what I want to look like, you know, I want my life to look like in a year, 10 years, three years, five years. What do I have to do today to change? Maybe nothing. Maybe you're already there. I know there's some people who are just kind of content with what they are and where they are and just want to continually get slightly better but don't need big changes. And that's fine. But I think this exercise is so powerful because most of us aren't, including me. I've got pretty big dreams here at 47 and things I want to do and ways I want to show up for people. And I started writing some of this stuff down. I was like, man, I'm pretty far away from where I want to be in 20 years from now. For me, I would put me at 67, man. It got me really thinking all the things, the small things, not huge. It's not like I got to go find all new friends and change everything about myself. But there are certain little things that you definitely need to start working on and changing. So this is very eye opening for me, these kind of five questions. And I would also urge you, as I said, write them down. But don't rush this. This is pretty important. So, I mean, take days, weeks, I mean, if you have to. I don't think any of us should be expected or feel some sort of sense of guilt or urgency that we have to answer these right now by the end of today. But I do think you should answer them and whether it takes you three days, five days, three weeks, whatever, to like list out those five questions. And, and, and he didn't even say in his podcast, the more you write and, and write these down and just start kind of brainstorming like, you know, we did growing up in, in school. The, the more all of a sudden stuff starts coming out and it just one will just hit you and be like, oh, that's it. Like, that's my purpose and these are my core beliefs, my vision. Here's why I was put on this, this earth. Amazing what happens when you write that stuff down. So that is it for this podcast I'm challenging you is to do that, to write those things down. And I'd love for you to share if any of you guys kind of have this stuff. Love hearing from you. Joealtstron.com or if you have questions or stuck on some of these and want to know how I kind of got through them, let me know. Joe saltstrong.com Otherwise, I will talk to you on the next episode. Peace.

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Cause fishing, it's in my soul it was passed down to me from the days ago Find us on the water if there was a way it's been said My papa, he wrote the book on catching big reds and 20 pound snook I wish I knew all the things he knew today for he's the reason why we are this way and he put fish in our souls to stay.