A couple weeks ago, I had a conversation with a friend.  We were talking about how I’ve shifted my content to focus on documenting, not creating. Just like Gary Vee told me, “Show how you’re building in public.”

(Was that a not-so-subtle name drop? Yes, but I’ll deny it.)

As I spoke with my friend, I said it felt like the end of an exciting challenge in my life. Goodbye curated narratives that looked like Instagram circa 2018 (don’t tell me you didn’t post a photo of your feet in the sand!), and HELLO GRIT.

I actually want to show the behind-the-scenes of a new build in my business.

A few minutes later, he corrected me and insisted this couldn't possibly be the end…that at the culmination of 13 years of creating YouTube videos (for example), I wasn’t ending. I was starting again.

But I'll be honest.  What I'm saying here–now–is the shiny.  The retrospective.  The icing on the cake.  This is the pretty stuff I want you to see and experience, but getting here?  Documenting in the mire has been extremely difficult.

In full disclosure, there are moments during filming when I just want to quit.  I am nervous, I am embarrassed, I am terrified of sharing so much of my personal business publicly.

As painstaking as these experiences were, (and are) I wouldn't change them for the world.  I didn't know how strong I was until I was desperate to survive.

We don't know what we're capable of until life thrusts us where we should be.

But this made me ask:  What if I lived my life this way?  As if I had no other option but to move forward.

What if I stopped giving myself excuses or easy ways out to not deal with the struggle, the hurt, or the fear?

That's what I want to focus on today.  And I'm not just going to talk about my experiences or mere suspicions as to why I think living this way is good.  I'm going to talk to you about concrete scientific studies that prove success has little to do with being the “best”, or the strongest, or the smartest.

Success goes to those who simply refuse to quit.  Every time, all the time.

A while ago, I came across a TED Talk given by Angela Lee Duckworth.  She spent years studying what makes people successful.

She was an inner-city school teacher and noticed a pattern with her students: normal predictors of success (privilege, IQ, race, etc) had little to do with actual success.

So Angela set out to discover what makes people successful.

• She studied cadets at West Point Academy and hypothesized who would last over the five years.
• She studied rookie teachers in tough neighborhoods to see if they would make it through their first year.
• She studied high-profile fortune 500 companies to see who would climb to the corporate ladder over time.

Everything she thought would be significant indicators of success–IQ, good looks, economic status, intelligence, health–didn't really matter.  At all.

So what's the one thing that made a person prone to success?  Grit.

What is grit?  It's the disposition of pursuing long-term goal with perseverance and passion.  Basically, it's sticking with things over the long-run and working hard.

Her studies showed the grittier you are, the more likely you are to succeed.

She took her ideas further by saying those who had natural abilities or were gifted in a discipline didn't mean they'd be successful.

In fact, she argues the opposite: if you have natural abilities, you aren't used to getting back up after failures.  If sports, or academics, or art has come easy to you most your life, when you're finally presented with a failure, it's as if you're not wired to deal with such things.

When I heard this, I let out an audible sigh.

My entire life I've never been one to stick out.  I wasn't the smartest, fastest, and wasn't the first to be chosen for team play.  None of this changed into adulthood, when I realized I also I didn't have a history with familial connections, wealth, or experience with starting a business.

For all intents and purposes, I had no reasons for anyone to think I could be successful.

Or at least that's how it appeared on the outside.

What people didn't know was how much grit I possessed.  Duckworth states that grit is most prevalent in people who have failed and gotten up again.  And failure?  I knew failure well…we've been frienemies since childhood.

I have grown accustomed to failing flat on my face and finding a way to keep going.  I didn't have much, but I definitely had grit.

Here’s what I’ve come to believe gritty people have in common:

1. They believe the ability to learn isn't fixed…it can change with effort.
2. They believe that if you acknowledge that failure isn't the end, they're more likely to persevere because they don't believe failure is a permanent condition.
3. They believe change is possible.  Always.
4. They don't let setbacks disappoint them…they knew they were coming.  Now they just have to workaround them.
5. They believe in finishing what they started.

This can be boiled down to one sentence:  Pushing yourself and getting up after disappointment is something you must always do to be a success.

Have you had failures with your business?  Good.  This means you're finding your path to success if you're willing to keep pushing forward.

Sometimes it's easy to respond to our failures by blaming it on a lack of X…

…I didn't have time…

…I didn't have the money…

…I didn't have the technology…

…I didn't have the education…

Sometimes it's easy to say we lacked resources to follow our dreams, but even if this true—you, in fact, lacked resources—you can still be resourceful.

The most successful entrepreneurs are those who take the little they have and make it work.

In order to survive, you must be resourceful because, if not, you will find yourself stuck on a merry-go-round of disappointment and frustration.  In order to get off that dizzy ride, you must be willing to change.

But with these changes, struggle will come.  Failures will come.  It's simply the natural order of how new things begin.

There will be more failures than successes…but the more you fail, the more you succeed.

The most successful people are those who don't let the past define them.  They take risks and become resourceful to follow their dreams.

Today, I hope you make the decision to succeed.

I hope you stop looking at everything you don't have, stop comparing your work to someone else's, stop listing your lack of resources.

Today I hope you make the decision to get gritty.

I believe we are capable of wild successes once we become desperate to survive,

j*