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Welcome to Leading With Force — a podcast where seasoned entrepreneur Brian Force shares the invaluable lessons he's learned on his journey through this crazy, wonderful life. Having built several multimillion-dollar companies, Brian dives into the nuts and bolts of building successful teams, scaling businesses, and leading with passion and purpose.
Each episode offers practical tools to effectively cast your vision, build your team, boost productivity, and become the leader you were meant to be. Brian's mission is to inspire you to unlock the incredible power within yourself, achieve your goals, and make a meaningful impact on the world. Join us as we explore how to find your inner leader, empower others, and embrace your journey.
Welcome to the show. I appreciate you spending a little bit of your time with me. It's really, really great to have you here and I want to dive right in today because I'm super excited about this episode and everything that we're going to talk about.
I really want to focus today. A little bit on ego, a little bit on outcomes, a little bit on experience, and a lot of bit on goals and why it is that we do what we do. We have talked a lot, and I think you, if you listen to this show, you've probably talked a lot about your big why. Why it is that you do whatever it is that you do, why you have your goals that you have, what is the outcome that you're looking for, and why is it important to you to ascertain or to attain that particular outcome?
There are a lot of reasons why we do anything in our life out of passion. Fear or pain or the pursuit of pleasure or necessity or survival or scarcity or abundance? We do things why? Because of a lot of different reasons, but our biggest wise Should really align with the life that we want to experience the people that we want to become the impact that we want to make in our world.
That's how we find our purpose. Our purpose, our true purpose is to have some meaningful impact on the world. Now everybody's purpose, the way in which they have that impact is going to vary. It's going to be a little bit different. It's going to be based on what you're interested in, what you're passionate about, what you believe to be true, what you find legitimate meaning in.
And so your big why tends to align with what you find purposeful. What you believe is your purpose here on Earth.
Now I don't take big whys very lightly. I think that your big why, why you do something is one of the most important things to really consider when you're heading down any journey in life, any new journey, a new business venture, a new relationship, a new anything.
Having clarity around your big why, why you're doing something is a crucial part of your success. Of finding a meaningful, purposeful life because without that big, why you can go in a million different directions and superficially accomplish a million different things, but it probably won't bring you true fulfillment, true joy, true satisfaction in your life.
If it doesn't align with why you're doing something. I actually think for the most part, people don't spend enough time deeply thinking about why they do what they do or why they want to do something.
For example, getting into a certain career path, starting a new business, achieving some goal financially. I don't think that we think enough about the why behind our actions, our reasoning, the outcomes we desire.
And that's why we truly end up really empty. A lot of us in society. We can achieve a lot of amazing things, but if we're not doing them for the right reasons, the reasons that align with our big why, our true purpose, they can be largely unfulfilling. And so I would encourage you before we even dive any deeper into this discussion would be to take as much time as you find necessary to really craft your big why.
What is it that truly speaks to you? As far as the impact that you want to have in this world, what is the purpose that you want to fulfill? And I think that it's incredibly important to have clarity around that because a lot of times our goals are defined by their outcomes. We want to do this. We want to have this.
We want to build this or we want to achieve this. Outcomes though are just simple snapshots in time. They're just simple little check marks in the journey that is our entire lives. Achieving an outcome is a singular moment in time. Buying that brand new car that you've been working so hard for, that's a singular moment in time.
Building the business to the financial level That you had on your goals is a singular moment in time. Getting married is a singular moment in time. Your big why should be more than just an outcome. It should be a willingness to have an experience.
Why do I want to do something It could just as easily be asked is what is it that I want to experience? What do I want to experience in my life that will bring meaning to me that will help me fulfill my purpose?
It's incredibly important to have ultimate clarity around not just your big why. But the experience that you'd like to have in order to achieve the outcomes that surround your big why.
I truly can't say this enough, the difference between having a big why that aligns with your true purpose and a big why that is simply a singular outcome that you'd really like to achieve is the difference between getting sidetracked, procrastinating, giving up, changing goals all the time, heading down a million different paths and allowing yourself to go through the experience of realizing that outcome, that big why.
And even when it's hard, even when it's difficult, even when it feels like it's not working, even when it's tremendously painful and scary and it feels like you're not enough and it feels like it's never going to happen.
Having a big why that is truly aligned with the impact that you want to have on the world allows you to experience every moment of the journey with appreciation and realize that the entire time your big why was really always about the experience itself. I'll give you a great example of what I mean by this. Jay Shetty talks about this very clearly in his book, Think Like a Monk, which if you haven't read, I highly encourage. He talks about his days at the ashram being a monk and being just enamored with some of the skills that the other monks have.
Some can meditate for days on end uninterrupted. Some can fast for enormous periods of time. And one has memorized all of the religious scriptures. And Jay says to his mentor, I wish that I could do that. And his guide turns to him and he says, Do you wish that you could do that?
Or do you wish that you could learn how to do that? And that's an incredibly powerful example of the difference between an outcome and an experience. And your big why being tethered only to an outcome robs you of the power of the experience that you'll have to go through in order to realize that outcome.
Which by the way, is exponentially more important than the outcome itself. Because with that experience, you can have a greater impact on the world in perpetuity over and over and over again. For example, when I started my first business, I really had no big why other than financial gain. I was a very courageous, risk taking young man with very little in his pocket, but needed for very little as well. And I wanted really big things in my life, mostly financial. And I had no real why behind that. Other than that. I wanted a lot of money because I never wanted to worry about being stressed financially.
And I knew that if I worked really hard, I could accomplish that outcome. Well, I learned a lot in that first business. I had a lot of setbacks, a lot of victories, a lot of failures, ultimately not a lot of purpose. And what I learned through that process That helped make me really successful later on in life was that without a reason for wanting the financial gain That goes well beyond just the money that you can that you can ascertain and the things that you can buy with it You're going to really have a difficult time weathering the inevitable storms that come with something like entrepreneurship It's really really really hard to be a successful business owner.
It's even harder to stay You A successful business owner through all sorts of business cycles and market volatility and unknown futures and variables that are going to get thrown at you. Becoming a successful entrepreneur, a successful business owner is not something you do one time. It's something that you can ascertain for one moment in time in the right market cycle, in the right place with the right idea.
And you can even do it really quickly in the modern era. But if you're just looking for that outcome, And you don't have a purpose and a true meaning behind why you're doing it, then you can ascertain that outcome for one moment in time. You can start a successful business, a business that is successful for a period of time, but then eventually.
You will face difficulties. You will face a changing market cycle. You will face new iterative technology. You will face competitors in your space. You will face people with a purpose behind what they're doing that are trying to outdo you every single day. And what's really difficult is attaining a certain outcome and then having to tread water and continue to fight an uphill battle every day to reclaim that spot at the top of the mountain because all you really wanted was financial gain or to buy cool things or to have a lot of money.
Well, you realize once you get a lot of money, and I have at times in my life, That without purpose, the money doesn't really mean much beyond a certain extent. Once your basic needs are covered and you're not coming from a place of financial scarcity or stress and your bills are paid, money is relatively purposeless unless you're doing something meaningful with it.
And so, what I learned in that first business, was that I was doing things for the wrong reasons because I hadn't found a meaningful, purposeful way to make an impact on the world. And now in the three businesses that I run or contribute to, we have deep, meaningful purposes. behind why we do what we do.
They're the reasons that we started the business. They're what we live by every single day. It's how we want to make a positive impact on our customer base. And it makes it a lot easier. Nothing's ever easy. It makes it a lot more palatable. To show up every single day and work towards our desired outcomes, because I know that every single day in my business, I am an ex, I am experiencing an incredible journey that's making me more well rounded as a human being.
That's teaching me valuable lessons. That's allowing me to have an impact on the world around me well before we achieve our desired outcome. When I've realized on this journey that I've been on building these businesses and these incredible organizations is that it's all about the experience. The experience is the big why the purpose that we've, the purpose that we have in our organizations, the impact that we want to make.
We live that every single day. Even though we haven't achieved our financial outcomes yet, I have a, a vision to sell one of our companies for a, a, a very substantial amount of money at some point in the future. And the reason that I have that goal is because there are other things that I also want to do in this world.
And I know that if I can build, when I can build this company to achieving that financial outcome, I will have made a really significant impact along the way. By the time that we get there, my purpose will have been fulfilled. But my why is the impact that I have every single day. My why isn't some singular outcome in the future.
And I think if you can wrap your head around that, It may adjust your thinking around your big why your big why shouldn't be some moment in the future when you all of a sudden get all the things that you've ever wanted. Your big why should be something that you're able to live every single day through the purpose that it has and the impact that you want to have on the world.
This is the difference between a big why that is fueled by ego and a big why that is fueled by your true self, the one that is unique and beautiful and brings incredible value into this world.
That's the you that should be fueling your big why. Now that doesn't mean that you can't have a lot of amazing things in your life. That doesn't mean that you can't buy really cool stuff with all the money that you make from your business. What it does mean is that experiencing the journey, appreciating the journey, and making an impact every day is how you're going to not only hit your goals in the future, But find fulfillment along the way because I can tell you as somebody who has had a lot of nice things and has had a lot of financial blessing, those things don't have much long term utility or purpose outside just making you feel good temporarily. When I was young, I think I was in my mid twenties and I had my first really successful business and I was really, really in love with a particular car.
It was a beautiful Porsche. I still say Porsche even though most people that have owned a Porsche call them Porsches now. Uh, I prefer Porsche. To say Porsche, I think it sounds less gaudy, but I went out and I bought this beautiful Porsche, did everything that you could do wrong as a young man in that situation, locked it in for like 12 percent interest.
Couldn't believe they even approved me for the car was definitely not in a financial position that I could do that comfortably without it really making an impact on my day to day finances. But as soon as they said that I was approved for a car loan at a Porsche dealership, I was like, wow. I've made it from this day forward.
I am a Porsche owner. My life will never be the same. I've pretty much accomplished everything that I want to. What you find, what I found is that about three months after owning that car, I could barely even remember what it looked like. It was just my car. It was just the thing you got into every day.
That was a pain in the butt to wash. That was a little bit uncomfortable at times. And I really found that there was no purpose in it. It was something that I really wanted. It was a singular outcome that I was driving towards, but because there was no purpose, because I wasn't making an impact in any way, shape or form, that thing that I ascertained, it had no meaning.
It had no real long term value. And that was the difference between an ego driven outcome and an outcome that allows me to have an impact through the experience that I'm going through every single day. Nowadays, I drive a pickup truck. It's reasonable and practical for my business and I get up every day and I go to an office surrounded by other very purpose driven people and we're very financially successful in what we do, but we make an impact every day long before we've achieved the ultimate outcome and goals.
I think it's an incredibly powerful thing to have clarity around your purpose behind your big why. Because there's a whole lot of time between now and when you achieve that singular outcome. The thing you wrote down as your why.
And you have to be willing to experience everything in between. And you'll find that ultimately that experience is you living your big why. Is you having that impact? Is you growing as a human and making a meaningful contribution to the world? And so I would invite you to have a conversation with yourself around your big why and not just what it is you want to accomplish, but what you are willing to and excited to experience along the way.
Thank you for spending some time with me today. I hope this has been impactful. If it has, drop a comment, get in contact with me. Let me know your thoughts and feelings. I look forward to seeing you next time.