I Discovered My Life’s Purpose Through Falling On My Face
By: Derick Van Ness
Tags: Passion, Business, Entrepreneurship, Purpose Driven Business, Purpose

After graduating college, there was one occupation I was most afraid of: sales.

But I knew if I ever wanted to communicate any idea effectively, in a way that would motivate people, I needed to learn how to sell. So of course, I immediately started selling door-to-door so I could slay that dragon as quickly as I could.

It was terrifying.

Then, as if door-to-door sales wasn’t enough, my next job was selling over the phone. In the three years I worked that job, I probably made about 40,000 cold calls.

I basically had to trick myself into making calls every day. For example, I told myself, “You can’t have coffee until you’ve made 20 calls.”

But you know what that job taught me? Perseverance. Persistence. Work ethic. It also taught me humility because it was hard enough that I had to seek help. I realized that, even without a ton of skill, you can get wherever you want to go with those qualities.

I learned that selling wasn’t about manipulating people or “getting them to do something.” Real sales is about listening to people and helping them get what they want, even if it’s not what you offer at that particular moment. If you can build a relationship and help them get what they want, you can get a customer, even if they’re not a paying one right away.

As much as I learned, though, I had one big problem with that job.

“I can make a living here, but I can’t make a life”

That job was in a cubicle, working under fluorescent lights, and I remember feeling like a caged tiger. I was living in Los Angeles at the time. I would look out at the sunshine and wish I could go outdoors, but I was stuck in there while everyone else was at the beach and going surfing.

I remember thinking, This isn’t how human beings are meant to live. I can make a living here, but I can’t make a life.

Photo by Luke Chesser on Unsplash

That’s when the world started to open up for me. I didn’t just look for what existed, but I started asking, “What could life be like? What could a career look like?”

That’s when I started to transition from a corporate lifestyle to running my own business. I didn’t know exactly what that would look like for me, but I knew it was something that I wanted.

From cubicles and fluorescent lights to freedom and sunshine

It was my birthday, right after the Twin Towers had fallen in 2001, and the economy was in the toilet. I stayed home and called in sick (even though I wasn’t sick).

I searched online, “What can I do for a business?” I ran across some real estate investing courses and thought, “Okay, here’s something I can do. If I can do 2 or 3 of these a year and make $30,000 or $40,000 each, that’s as much as my corporate job, and that way I’m not grinding away every year.”

I figured I could take the sales skills and everything I’d learned about construction and produce something of value to people.

The transition into starting your own business is not an easy one. I was getting up at 5:45 so I could fight through LA traffic to be at work by 7 so I could be on the phone by 8. Then they would say, “Well, you can leave by 5, but the successful people are here until 6 or 6:30.” It took about six months for me to really make the transition, and it was scary because I didn’t really know where I was going; I just knew that where I was wasn’t working for me.

“I didn’t really know where I was going; I just knew that where I was wasn’t working for me.”

I started saving every dollar, didn’t go out, and didn’t do anything fun. Before you make a leap, you have to squat down and contract all your muscles so you can spring higher. I was pulling everything in so I could make that leap forward.

I spent every lunch hour working on my business. I worked on it when I got home from work, and I educated myself on the way to work. This was before podcasts, so I had stacks of CDs in my car about real estate, finance, and sales… and I was listening to them on the way to and from work.

The day I quit my “real job”

It was May 1, 2002. I woke up that morning, and something seemed a little bit off. It turned out I had Bell’s palsy, which basically meant half my face stopped working the day I quit my job.

Well, when you’re in face-to-face sales, guess what? Half of your face not working is…a little bit of a problem. But I was so determined that I didn’t care. I went out and got to work for myself, trying to find my first real estate deal.

My little sister came over a couple days later and asked, “What’s wrong with your face?” I replied, “Oh, no big deal, half my face isn’t working, but hey, I started a business!”

It took a couple of months for my business to do anything. I worked late into the night, stuffing envelopes. I felt like I was going off the deep end and right into Crazy Town for my business, and I was a little bit scared of what it might turn into.

Photo by Avi Richards on Unsplash

The point of no return

When you get to the point of no return, the place where you feel like it really makes no sense to keep doing what you’re doing, two important things happen:

You learn you’ve found something you’re REALLY passionate about Things start shifting

After I’d been at this 2 ½ months and hadn’t made a dollar when I finally landed my first deal. I took over a guy’s mortgage, fixed up the house, sold it, and then did the same thing with a condo and a few other deals.

Those first couple of deals were a little shaky because I didn’t quite know what I was doing, but I gutted them out and (with a little luck) I was able to make them profitable. I was able to make about $60,000 my first year.

The business took off, and I began doing 1 or 2 houses a month and reinvesting into myself. I started spending tons of time and money on education, courses, personal development, and business development. Over the course of the next couple of years, I probably spent $150,000 just learning new things and growing my business.

Finally, I’d built my business to a point where everything was on auto-pilot. I had three employees — a sales guy and two assistants. We had multiple streams of income, multiple projects going at a time, and things were good. I was making a LOT of money, and for a short period of time, I didn’t even have to come into the office.

I remember driving around in my car and thinking, my biggest problem right now is that I don’t have anybody to hang out with because everyone else has to go to work!

As soon as that happens, and you get arrogant, the world decides it’s time for you to learn another lesson…

The day things crashed, in more ways than one

The real estate market began to change in 2008 — especially in California.

I was living the dream, snowboarding in the Sierra Mountains because I didn’t have to go to an office. As I went off a jump, a snowmobile came at me from my left. I slid out as the snowmobile smashed into my and snapped my femur.

Right about then something else happened, the economy started to melt down.

Up to that point I had been buying houses for $200,000 and selling them for $300,000. Almost overnight, the houses that had been selling for $300,000 began selling for $160,000.

I didn’t know what was going on with my health or my business. I was loaded up on Vicodin because I needed it for the pain. By the time I came through, the whole world had changed.

I felt like the Titanic when it had hit the iceberg. I knew the ship was going down, and I knew that, as the captain, I was going down with it…but I couldn’t make it sink any faster. It took 18 months to fully sink the ship — to run out of all of my resources.

Photo by Philippe Oursel on Unsplash

“It was the best thing I never want to do again.”

I could have gotten off the ship. I could have bailed and left the investors hanging, but it was really important to me to get as many people off the ship as possible before it sank.

In that process, I learned a lot about myself. I learned where I was overspending and being inefficient. I learned a lot about my own arrogance at the time and thinking I had it all figured out. It was the best thing I never want to do again.

It was a business breakdown, but for me, it was also a personal awakening.

Rebuilding from the ground up

After the real estate business melted down, I spent a year or two doing digital marketing. This was back when it was the Wild West. Everyone was learning at the same time. I made money in little pockets here and there, but I had to do a lot to pay the bills and my new income wasn’t cutting it. I realized pretty quickly that it wasn’t necessarily going to work for me and I really ran into a complete mental wall at that point.

I’d come down from having six figures in the bank and more money rolling in than I knew how to spend each month all the way down to selling everything I had on eBay to pay the bills. If you’ve ever been there, you know it’s a really rough time. It’s difficult to know you’re going negative every single month, and I went through that for a year or two.

My friend called and said, “Hey, I have a job for you.” He was my best friend, so I decided to come work with him but I was so broke, I didn’t even have enough money for gas to make the move. Thankfully my parents gave me some money so I could drive from Los Angeles to Houston, Texas, and I got to live on an air mattress in his girlfriend’s apartment’s living room.

Talk about humbling.

I helped him start an insurance business, and I learned work ethic all over again — what it was like to be out in the trenches every single day. I learned how to leverage, work with, and motivate people. I really learned what it’s like to build something with a group of people.

I elevated myself to the point where another good friend came and said, “Hey, you’ve got this skill set — you’ve worked in real estate, you’ve worked in sales, you’ve built teams — plus, there’s this spiritual side of you that really cares about the greater good and doing something with purpose. I really want you to come work with me.” That’s when I started working full time with Garrett Gunderson.

Discovering my life’s passion

It wasn’t just about money, it was helping people create a life. It wasn’t just about helping people with their taxes or investments, it was about helping people find and define their Soul Purpose and put the money together to enable them to live that fully.

Photo by Noah Silliman on Unsplash

More than anything, I love helping people, and I love seeing people succeed.

So when I was able to use all my skills to truly help people, it was like winning the lottery.

I thought, THIS is something I can do. THIS is something I can put my whole heart into, because even if I fail, I’ll make a difference for people. And if I succeed, I can’t think of a better job than helping people face their biggest fears, untangle the biggest mysteries in their lives, and create something they’ve always wanted — something that’s always lived in their minds but that they’ve never seen manifest in their lives.

That was how I began my mission to remove financial insecurity and help people create financial certainty in their lives so they can get out there and live the lives they’re truly here to live. Everything I’ve done the last 10 years has been aligned with that.

Many people are stuck because they have the right mindset and the right ideas, but they’re subconsciously holding themselves back. Mastering finances is really not that difficult, but getting yourself to a place where you’ll allow that to happen takes some work for most people. You have to dig in and understand where you’ve been self-sabotaging and haven’t even realized it.

Using my past mistakes to help others build a better future

“Having systems in place to protect yourself from yourself is vital.”

One thing I realized after I basically fell on my face was that as you’re building wealth, you need to take some chips off the table and set those aside to build financial certainty. I’d been creating wealth, but reinvesting all of it. Then when the economy fell apart, I had all my chips on the table and was left with nothing. I’ve learned that one of the most important things people need to have in place is some sort of systematic savings.

How do you not only keep your chips safe but also get that money working for you? You need a system to pay yourself first.

So many of us get trapped working for money to build a life we love, but we simultaneously want to set enough aside that we can get our money working for us. These two ideas can often feel like they’re working against one another, so having systems in place to protect yourself from yourself is vital.

Systems are consistent, and people — even with the best of intentions — are not consistent. It is almost impossible to consistently do something if you don’t have a routine, system, or structure working for you. If you just do something when you feel like it, very rarely are you able to build the big monolith you’re trying to construct.

I’ve been in the trenches for years dialing all this in, refining it, building the network, and now we want to leverage this system to reach more people. Up to this point, we’ve been very “boutique,” but now it’s time to take this to the people. The systems that are currently out there are not serving you. They’re tying up your money until you’re 59 ½, and you can’t get to it if you need it. They’re keeping you from chasing your dreams because you don’t have access to cash.

My team and I are now on a financial mission to empower 1 million entrepreneurs by 2030 to pursue the things they want to pursue in life. For you that could mean building your business, taking care of your family, or saving the planet.

We want to empower you through financial certainty to go out and live your Soul Purpose, your fully expressed life. Personally, I want you to find your true purpose in life without needing to fall on your face and lose everything. I want you to be able to look back and say, “I’ve loved my life. I gave everything I had and laid it all on the table because I was able to focus on what mattered most.”