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Excerpt

How do you find motivation when times are hard?

To be honest, times are hard right now and it’s tough to find motivation. To be honest, it is. I guess what we can do is to listen to people who are able to make things happen right now. I think that that is one big way to have some motivation in your life. There’s a lot of things to be thankful for.

I listened to a podcast recently. I forgot which one, but what that person did to be motivated is to write down 10 things that he or she would be thankful for that day. And that helps. If there are at least 10 things you’re grateful for or you’re thankful for the day. Write it down or say it out loud that helps to motivate you. No matter how down you are, no matter how out you are, out of the count, it helps to motivate. Because you know that there are things that are good in your life. There are things that you can look forward to in your life. Motivation for me is it’s about contentment and gratitude. It’s not about heights. It’s not about emotion. It stems from contentment and gratitude. So if you are content, you’re thankful, even when times are hard, you can be motivated.

Do you think there’s always a downside to success?

I do think there’s a downside to success. That’s why there’s a Bible verse:

Pride comes before the fall.

I don’t think you’re going to be proud if you’re not successful in anything. There is that downside to success. The biggest enemy of success is success. Because a lot of companies, when they’re successful already, they stop innovating. They stop experimenting, they stop working hard, they stop doing what made them successful and that causes them to fail. There are a lot of downsides to success. If you’re able to study books like Jim Collins, his book, How the Mighty Fall, you will learn that big companies, how they run their business to the ground is because of ego, pride, and because of their success.

You put it in context. When you said, when you persevere for your dreams, you always have to invest your time. And when you’re a parent, you’re always going to juggle. And sometimes families put aside since the reasoning is we work because of them. Here’s something I learned: when you put God first in your life, remember Matthew 6:33 “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. And all of these things will be added to you.”

When you put God first in your life, I learned that success will follow. However you define success to be. It’s true in my life as well. Whenever I don’t put God first, whenever I make a decision ahead of God, I don’t pray about it. I don’t think about what God thinks, it fails.

Success does not follow. Failure follows. Heartaches follow. Headaches follow. But whenever I put God first, I pray about it. I ask my wife what she thinks. I put my family first, success does follow. It may follow suit a lot later, maybe delayed may come a year or two later, but success does follow. Juggling between family and business for me is, is a difficult thing, but it’s a no-brainer when push comes to shove. You have to put family first. It’s hard for you to keep on telling them that, you know, I’m doing this because I love you. I’m doing this because I want to support you, but you lose them along the way because they don’t see you anymore. They don’t hear from you. You don’t spend time with them.

Having to juggle between family and business is like you’re saying that you’re doing the business, you’re investing so much time and effort for the business because of your family, but your family is losing you, then it doesn’t make sense. You have to put your family first. The business will be there. As long as it’s generating positive cashflow, revenue is greater than expenses. You’re okay. You don’t need to sacrifice your family for that. You don’t need to put your family on the altar of your business.