Whenever I give a speech, I will get as many people emailing me about how it impacted their personal life as it does their business. Sometimes I even get more. And this doesn’t surprise me – whether building an impassioned culture or an impassioned life really comes down to being able to bring your Core Values, your Core Purpose and your Envisioned Future alive within your company; or within your own personal life.

As I did my last speech, I reflected on my past 7 years and some of the struggles that we have gone through on the personal side of life. And one thing really stood out for me:

Purpose makes you fight for what truly is important.

Purpose keeps you on the path – on the path that you are supposed to be on. And it makes you unwavering in your commitment, even when things are so difficult that you think you can’t endure.

My family is tough. My wife, Gayla and I have been on a long difficult path for the past 7 years. For 7 years we tried valiantly to have kids. And we tried everything. We have had too many miscarriages to count (I lost count at 10); had two failed adoptions (one child taken away from us and in the other situation, the agency we were using (and paying) went bankrupt after being on their wait list for 2 years); lots of failed IVF treatments, and (at least) 5 attempts at surrogacy (I lost count on this one – there is a bit of “bury my head in the sand” syndrome here. Do you know how much it is to do this?? You don’t want to know).

And through this my Dad died (my best friend), my Uncle Robert died (my “second” Dad), my Nana died……let’s just say that we had a tough go of it. But we persisted. And we fought. My wife devoted her past 7 years to the fight. All of our money; all of our time; everything we had was put into the fight. And now we have a completed family – two wonderful girls, Daisy and Aja.

And it turns out our kids are tough too. Daisy was a surviving triplet. She wasn’t supposed to be here. She was supposed to be born at 23 weeks and would have had a 3% chance of making it. She fought HARD for 15 weeks to make it. Our doctor called her a miracle child. And now she is the healthiest strongest 3 year old girl I know.

Our second, Aja, also is a fighter. Aja was our very last attempt. People thought we were crazy to try again, but we had a vision from day 1 to have 2 kids, and nothing was going to stop us. Well, almost nothing. She was our last attempt because we were drained and done – emotionally, physically, financially – from the fight for 7 years. So we gave it one last try. Unfortunately the day after we had seen and heard a strong heartbeat (we were pregnant!), we got a call saying that our surrogate had a miscarriage. Last year, over Christmas, for 2 long weeks we thought we were done. And then a another call came. “We found a heartbeat.” Different doctors and 3 ultrasounds missed it for 2 weeks . Somehow, in some small little miraculous way, little Aja survived. She fought. And today, we have our 2nd, what our doctor again, called a “miracle child.”

So what kept us fighting? What kept us going when most people would have stopped and given up long ago? What kept us happy, even through the really dark days? And what kept our relationship strong, when so many couples who go through what we do don’t make it?

Two things.

First, a strong vision of what the future will look like. We had envisioned what our family would be and look like, how life would be. And it kept what truly is important in front of us.

Second, we knew what our purpose was. And by having our purpose clear in our minds, it gave us the passion and the strength to keep up the fight, No matter what. And that is what purpose does, for you or your company - it gives you something to passionately fight for.

 And did I mention that through all of this, we were building a hyper growth company?

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Posted in Core Purpose core values The Envisioned Future by admin 6 Comments