Perseverance: The Rewards Of Not Giving Up

with guests Cody Sperber, Barney Waters, Joel Marion, Aaron Stokes, and Drew Manning #MakingBank S4E48

In business it is impossible to predict every challenge or obstacle that may be placed on your path to success. There will be many challenges, issues, problems, and hurdles that appear along the way, for some, these challenges are detrimental, for others these challenges teach them valuable lessons in business and life alike. The way these challenges are dealt with will make all the difference in the future of your business. On this week’s episode we heard about many of those business downfalls and how they shaped the future of the businesses and the way the entrepreneurs faced future challenges. These aren’t easy pitfalls to admit but really speak to the character and drive of the guests we spoke with this week. If you are in need of a perseverance pep-talk, there is no better place to start than the expertise of these five industry leaders.

Self-Doubt and Limiting Beliefs

The first guest on this week’s episode of the Making Bank podcast was Cody Sperber. Cody gave insight into his personal struggles within his own thought process and insecurities. When Cody was first starting out he was insecure about looking so young, which he believed in-turn made him appear unprofessional. Cody worked really hard to overcome his inner critic that was working against him. He knew he had to make it work being in business for himself, because he knew the nine-to-five world was not for him and that he could not succeed in that working environment. Once Cody was able to find his flow and overcome his self-doubt he made huge strives in business, which in turn worked to boost his confidence even further.

Need For Knowledge

The next guest we spoke with was Barney Waters, his biggest piece of advice was the necessity to continue learning. He looked back at his previous hard times of many failures and losses and frankly being shunned by others and not having others to work with, not getting his calls returned. These were hard times and can be extremely discouraging for any entrepreneur. Barney saw this as an opportunity to continue learning and has kept up his need for knowledge, and made note of that fact that there are a ton of successful entrepreneurs out there with no formal education in their field. With all the technology at our fingertips there has never been an easier time to learn. The options are endless and there is something for every learning style. With options like podcasts, YouTube videos, magazines, books, articles, documentaries, and of course books there is really no excuse not to continue educating yourself.

Learning From Failures

Joel Marion spoke to the painful truth of having literally a hundred or so failures. These painful truths led him to change up his business plans many, many times. All of these rejections and redirections proved to him that being able to pivot and adapt makes all the difference in business. These numbers were discouraging but taught Joel the important lesson of persistence. A lot of people would be so discouraged they would give up in the face of so much adversity, but not Joel. He used this lesson and continues to adapt and pivot to become more and more successful, an inspiring lesson in business and confidence.

Admitting The Hard Truths

Aaron Stokes showed a lot of vulnerability and honesty in his recounting of his personal and business failures. In 2012 Aaron had the worst year of his life, he made almost a million dollars in that year and then subsequently lost a million dollars in that same year. That is an extremely intense place to be in business and in life. Aaron stated that this extreme loss absolutely crushed him, and changed who is still to this day. When backed into a corner like this, big decisions need to be made, Aaron made some good ones and some bad ones as was very open about his experience. He was in an extreme amount of debt and needed money fast, he spoke to the fact that he could not get loans from the banks at the time and was having to borrow from loan sharks, which was only increasing his debt. He felt like everything was crumbling around him, in an attempt to keep up the business’ name he was falling very deep into debt and quickly. He had to make something happen, and what happened next was not ideal. Aaron ended up transferring the entirety of his family’s savings account into his business account, a deeply painful place to be. This obviously had repercussions, his wife was furious and felt he had disappointed her and the family. A hard truth to admit, but Aaron was honest about his experience, so now something really had to change. Aaron started looking for other ways to get him and the business out of this rut, he started studying, reading, and attending seminars. While attending one of these seminars he told his story and thought it would not be well received, but in fact it was the opposite, the other attendees pressed him for more information and wanted to learn from his experience. Aaron showed a lot of bravery and perseverance by sharing his experiences and those are characteristics of true business leaders.

Drew Manning also had to come to terms with his past as well, but he knew he had to do it in a comprehensible way. He had been suffering and struggling for awhile and desperately needed to make big changes. It took Drew a long time to come to grips with his situation, but once he did, he wanted to use his experience to help others. He took a very calculated approach in owning his past, in one day he released a podcast, social media post, and a blog post about his experience, a bold move. He then went on to release the steps he took to better his situation in an attempt to help others that may be suffering or struggling with the same issues that had been plaguing him.

This was a very raw and honest episode of the podcast and hopefully having insight into these major challenges faced by industry leaders and how they handled them can help you along your personal business journey.