Grab Life by the Coconuts
I have a confession: I love watching the Real Housewives of New York City, mainly because of one dynamic personality, Bethenny Frankel. She’s feisty, whitty, motivated and intelligent. She used the Housewife platform to create and promote the Skinnygirl Margarita, which she ultimately sold for an estimated 100+ million. In a random Google search I noticed that Bethenny was speaking at Grant Cardone’s 10x Growth Conference (I had no idea what it was) in Miami, Florida, along with another one of my female role models, Sara Blakely. Sara created Spanx with $5,000.00 in the bank. She’s been on Forbes Magazine, owns 100% of her company, and most importantly, she seems like a super cool, down-to-earth human being. Other business greats like Daymond John, Steve Harvey, and Jesse Itzler were on the list, too.
So, to Miami we went. After many calls, emails and texts inquiring about the Conference, I thought I’d share my takeaways. I’m sure my co-attendees would have other, inspiring takeaways that I hope they share (Hint, Hint: Aaron Parker, Nick Patton and Thomas Patton).
I’ll save my takeaways from the leading ladies and start with Mr. Jesse Itzler. Jesse (Sara’s husband -- talk about a power couple) gave the keynote speech on Day 1. It was fantastic. Jesse was a rapper, started a private charter jet company (Marquis Jets), a coconut water company (Zico) (hence, the title of this blog), and has written two books. He was an excellent speaker -- charismatic and hysterical. Here’s what I learned:
Create Your Own Luck
Don’t wait for things to come to you, go out and create your own “luck.” Too often we wait for things to randomly show up in our life as a sign to make a change or we look at others achieving success and say “they’re so lucky.” Our own fears hold us back from achieving what we should and/or our fears make us resentful and envious of those living out their gifts and achieving greatness. There’s no such thing as luck. There’s hard work, dedication, action steps, taking risks and going after what you want and what you deserve. Don’t let “luck” find you, because it won’t. Behind every successful person are years of blood, sweat (in our case, a lot of sweat) and tears. Go out and make yourself a success -- work your booty off, seize opportunities and make your life great.
Your Biggest Limitation in Life is Yourself
We hold ourselves back from a fulfilling life because we set ceilings on our potential and fail to take action. Inaction is the biggest hindrance to happiness, success and change.
Here’s the lies we regularly tell ourselves that lead to inaction:
“I don’t think I can.” Why not? Why not try? Fear holds us back from reaching our full potential. We’re scared we will fail, so we don’t even try. Re-define fear. What we should fear is living a stagnant life. We should fear not living up to our potential. We should fear missing out on opportunities. We should fear inaction.
“I don’t have time.” We use time as the biggest excuse not to get things done. Don’t we all have an extra hour in the day to invest in something we want to accomplish? During John Maxwell’s speech he said, “If you want to write a book, here’s what you need to do…” I grabbed my phone ready to take notes on whatever profound advice he was about to give. It’s always been a goal of mine to write a book. And you know what he said? “Grab a notepad and …. start writing… do this for an hour every single day.” It wasn't profound. It was completely obvious. You want to do something, do it and start doing it today.
“Someday…” What the hell does that mean? Seriously. People say “someday I’ll travel”, “someday I’ll run a marathon”, “someday I’ll start my own business”. You might as well be saying “someday I’ll ride a unicorn.” Can you imagine how different your life would be if you turned your “someday’s” into “today’s”. Book a trip today. Start running today. Take action today.
Set the bar higher. Stop making excuses. Grab your life by the coconuts.
Xoxo,