The Radical Decision I Made that Changed My Life and What’s Happened Since.

August 2021 was the month that I made the most terrifying and incredible decision ever.

I was about to reach my dream job in an industry that I loved. I was being groomed, I had a lot of support from people I trusted, and my thought at the time was that it just couldn’t get better than this.

It wasn’t until I started hearing on repeat from my mentors and many others, “it’s lonely at the top”, “you’ll have to work more hours”, “it’s a lot of pressure”.

You see as Division President of a national home builder – my dream job at the time – you have to have a long-term commitment to that path. You must give everything you have to that job to be successful. That did not scare me. I’m used to giving all I have, and more. I kinda thrive on it.

But, I did not want to be lonely; or be away from my family longer; or experience unneeded pressure .

Eventually the way I thought about that job scared the hell out of me. Over and over, I heard those warnings. And there was something inside me happening. Something that was preparing me for the biggest change in my life that I never saw coming. After tremendous soul searching and no clear answer, I decided to follow my gut and leave the career that I had invested 22 years into right precisely the time I was set to reach my biggest goal.

It takes so much courage and energy to be able to make a decision like this. In my situation, I thought and stressed about every little detail about how I would leave this job, this career, this team that I loved so much; I did not really think much about what I would do after that. I had a loose plan but I had absolutely no idea how it would come together.

Fast forward two years and 113 business ideas later, and I finally have all the pieces to the first puzzle in place and have figured out what all my supporters told me back then. I’m going to do great! 

How do I know this when I have not seen proof of it in my new business?

Here’s how.

When things got tough and I began questioning all the decisions I had made, I felt myself going into a spiral. I was always moving up a ladder in business and career, I did not even really remember what the bottom of the ladder looked like.  So, starting over from scratch with no plan, no team, and no structure was terrible. I sat at the bottom of the ladder for far longer than I thought I would because I literally did not know how to get to that next step.

Over time, and with a lot of help from Google, I figured out how to get to the next step and then the next. The process was SLOW and I was more frustrated than not, but I kept doing it.

Sitting on the second step of a very long ladder, I took a weekend and had a deep heart to heart with myself and decided it was time to redefine success.

Here is what success looks like to me now:

• I am home when my kids come home from school.
• I can travel on school breaks because I have freedom of location.
• I am building a business that, in time, will grow with or without me.
• I am growing multiple streams of income.
• I can take my kids to their doctor appointments.
• I can have lunch with friends in the middle of the day.  
• I get to work with the most awesome clients.
• I can volunteer to help with school projects.
• I’m building a team that can grow with me forever.
• I have the opportunity to make a much bigger impact.
• There is no limit to my income. I can grow as much as I want to.

The past two years have been an enormous season of learning for me. Some things I learned about myself were really hard hard to process. Those lessons, combined with finally learning that the answer to nearly everything can be answered by google, were the very things that I needed to learn to begin to grow again.

Ultimately, I want to work with a circle of people; united by a common goal, motivated by success, and driven by impact. And when I picture the next goal now, its not lonely, its filled with memories of the time I had with my family, and its something that will always continue to evolve.

I will be sharing more as the days and weeks come about the way I will reach my new goals but for now I just wanted to catch-up!

I hope you follow along.

@heylesliemurr