What the successful have in common.
Do you know them? What do Mark Batterson and GaryVee have in common?...
He left a full scholarship in one of the top five schools in the country to transfer his studies to a small not known Bible College. He studied the word, and as a young man full energy and hopes, he decided to plant a church in Chicago, but it failed. Then, he decided to take his wife and move to Washington DC for a fresh start without knowing anyone or having any job. Crazy?
Now, Mark Batterson is the lead pastor of National Community Church (NCC), an eight campuses congregation. He is also the author of nine books and NCC is recognized as one of the most innovative as well as one of the most influential churches in America. He is now in his forties and has been working on NCC's development for twenty years.
Now, this other guy, an entrepreneur and social media marketer/guru is blowing up on every social media. He has different shows on YouTube and is known for having employees following him on a daily basis to film and capture everything that he does. He was referred to as the "Wine Guy," as he called attention and reached success with the show Wine Library TV.
Today, he is a four-time New York Times bestselling author, international speaker, and has the net worth of $200 million. This man, Gary Vaynerchuk also known as GaryVee, is now in his forties and has been working as an entrepreneur for at least twenty years.
What do they have in common? They are both really successful in their area of choice, of course, but that is not just it!
In this post, I acknowledge that success is holistic! It is a mix of many essential characteristics, habits, and mindsets. However, we focus on two critical ones showed by the figures described above, they are:
- Patience
- Grit
We start with patience. Patience has been mentioned in many articles and videos on this blog. It is necessary, it sounds simple, but is never easy!
Mark Batterson and GaryVee worked in the dark for more than twenty years in an area of choice.
Mark has been pastoring since his twenties! He seems young for his level of success in the religious field, he is forty-seven years old, but he has been working and evolving for more than two decades. In his sermon, The Power of Patience he says, "Anybody that has done anything will tell you that there is a process and often it is not long and exciting. It is long and boring, but that is how miracles happen!"
GaryVee on the same topic says, "I was patient... while the market and the machine told me I wasn't going to win." GaryVee filmed his show Wine Library TV for eighteen months for five days a week before getting any attention, and he worked for thirteen years before saying a word to the public. Now, he describes patience as "The one word that built my success!"
In a world in which we don't allow ourselves to be bored anymore because of social media, games, internet, and overflowing information, we need to understand that the road to real and sustained success will be boring at times.
Instead of comprehending boredom as a sign to change routes right away, we all need to understand that every job and every routine will have moments of boredom. Thus, our ability to see that boredom as necessary for the long run will make a difference in our levels of persistence, learning, and grit.
Now, let's talk about grit. Angela Lee Duckworth, the author of the book "GRIT: The power of passion and perseverance," describes grit as, "Sustained application of effort towards a long-term goal." Angela conducted many studies with high-achievers in different areas that varied from spelling bee tournament winners to top corporate salesman. She found that grit as defined above is the biggest predictor of lifelong achievement.
Again, look at Mark Batterson and GaryVee! Completely different areas, different principles, but years of work in a field of interest with visions and bold goals.
Mark once stumbled upon an abandoned crack house in a great area of Washington DC, and he had a vision of transforming that into a coffeehouse that would serve as a place for community and church to cross paths. What?! That idea was not just an unusual idea, it was crazy in the eyes of traditional Christians. He started praying with his team for it, and they prayed without ceasing for six years! After that long period of persistence and faith, they got the property even though they were competing with three other offers and two of them were from real estate developers.
Now, GaryVee. The man decided that he wanted to do something different when he was thirty years old. He did not want to be the "Wine Guy" anymore! People told him that he should stick with what he knew, and he said in some of his videos that people would send him messages saying "Shut up! What do you know about business? You know about wine!" But he had a vision of winning in something else! He invested early in Uber, Facebook, Snapchat, and other social medias and focused on digital marketing to grow his companies, VaynerMedia and VaynerX. Today, his net worth is of $200 million.
Gary applied grit for thirteen years before starting to talk to the public. Then, he used grit for eighteen months while nobody cared for his wine show on YouTube. Then, after reaching success with that, he applied grit for another eleven years on digital marketing so he could become what he is today.
Bottom line: We need to apply sustained effort towards long-term goals, visions, or dreams! And to do that, we will need to have a lot of patience in the process!
To develop grit, we need to develop a fascination for what we are involved! Mark Batterson is fascinated by God and real truth in a society that seems lost among many superficial offerings. And GaryVee is fascinated by the speed of business' changes in this globalized economy.
It is also necessary for us to think about improvement and not perfection, seek purpose behind of what we do, and have a growth mindset that believes that we do not have fixed abilities. We can get better at anything.
The most successful people regardless of profession, beliefs, and appearances have applied these two invaluable characteristics in their lives. Don't underestimate patience and grit.
Check more about Mark Batterson (which is one of my favorite influencers) and/or GaryVee in the videos below. Thanks for reading. Now let's apply patience and grit into our visions, dreams, and goals. Till next post!
Video - The power of patience by Mark Batterson: http://theaterchurch.com/media/elements/the-power-of-patience