True Success Is The Ability To Give Back

One of the reasons I’m excited to be a business consultant and leadership mentor is because more and more people are choosing to turn away from the traditional work force and corporate environments to undertake starting their own companies.

According to this article, “60 percent of millennials are turning their backs on the traditional career path and instead, consider themselves entrepreneurs, with ideas, capital, and plans for startup endeavors, according to for-profit Rasmussen College.”

Why is this exciting? Well, as the article continues to state, “The number one reasons millennials are going this route is freedom, followed by ability to choose projects and unlimited income potential.”

Increasingly more people are redefining success as creating enough income and wealth to enable them to give back. This is a success practice I have used to inspire and motivate entrepreneurs and business leaders in my consulting work. The pearl I have always referred to by Zig Ziglar is, “If you help enough other people get what they want, you’ll get what you want.”

Applying the Pearl

When my partner, Bobby Bradley, and I started CST, Bobby had in her mind that once she obtained a certain level of wealth and financial freedom, she would be able to further pursue realizing her dream, which was finding a way to give back to the community she grew up in. And she has done exactly that. The wealth she obtained through our sale of CST enables her to give back in every way. She formed Village of Promise, whose mission is “to eradicate poverty in Huntsville, AL, one neighborhood at a time.”

So success is being redefined, finally, as not simply being “rich” and “better than everyone else.” It is, in fact, being viewed as a vehicle to obtain freedom and perpetuate the cycle of giving back—to employees, to our communities, and to our world. I look forward to aiding entrepreneurs in achieving that level of success.