Nearly every entrepreneur sets out to fulfill their dreams with high hopes and aspirations. That gut-deep feeling of accomplishing anything you set your mind to is the fuel to starting any new endeavor. However, too many leaders discover that their passion has burnt out or stalled in the world of endless bureaucratic red tape. Learn how you can discover your true worth and use personal agility to unlock it.
If you have a dream and a desire to truly make an impact, how do you start turning that passion into a profitable and life-giving pursuit? Crossing the rubicon from passion-struck plans to authentic leadership often requires learning who you are and what you are worth — and making the tough choices to arrive at your destination.
For serial entrepreneur Maria Matarelli, discovering her true worth and distilling that into passion-struck leadership was a lesson learned the hard way. Despite launching five successful companies and becoming an internationally sought-after DJ, the journey to becoming truly passion-struck required her to boldly step forward past her own self-limiting expectations.
Maria pulls back the curtain on her personal experience of waking up to a passion-struck “why” in a conversation with John R. Miles on the Passion Struck™ podcast. Her quotes are from this conversation.
To Discover Your True Worth, You Have To Wake Up To Reality
Entrepreneurs who have broken free of their nine-to-five grind have to realize that there is more to life than merely climbing a career ladder that someone else erected for you.
Stop for a moment and reflect on the path that you took to get where you are today. Did you step forward boldly and pave your own way? Or did you follow a set of predetermined rules that dictate how you are to engage with the industry and learn the step-by-step process to move ahead?
When you awaken to your potential, you will begin to realize that your worth far exceeds what you thought. Suddenly, your circumstances will turn into potential opportunities for passion-struck innovation.
Maria reflects on her own moment of clarity:
“I remember working in an office and one day realizing, “This my life — this cubicle.” I had taken my first job at age 15, and in college, I was holding down three jobs just to pay bills and tuition. After college, I did what any business student does. Get a job at a stable firm and start climbing the ladder.”
Maria’s story is that of so many passion-struck entrepreneurs and leaders. Until you notice that you are following someone else’s pre-set plan for your life, you will never break free and discover your true worth. If there was no floor or ceiling to your passion, what would you do? How would you get there? What is stopping you from doing it?
Maria’s journey to her worth-discovery started with a simple question:
“Is this the dream? Is my passion in life project management?”
Your True Worth Requires Your Daily Investment
Once you discover that you are worth more than your current circumstances allow, it’s time to make a change. However, merely realizing you are worth more doesn’t equate to being ready to jump into the mix and change the world. The next step is to begin boosting your worth with daily, passion-led investments.
What aspect of your career do you enjoy? What led you to decide to jump into this field or industry? How can you take that singular passion and combine that with the unique value you bring to your world?
Maria found that her path to entrepreneurship wasn’t too far from where she was working at the time. No significant change was needed in her world. She just had to find her laser-focus on her true passion and move that way with all-deliberate speed. It was this change that helped her to discover her true worth.
“I realized, “Okay, I’m going to become an expert in this one aspect of my field that nobody else seems to want to learn.” Rather than give up, I decided to instead step out into entrepreneurship and launch a company to help others become comfortable with Agile methods.”
The realization of her worth and unique contribution led her to start taking daily steps to become an expert in her field. Before long, this daily self-investment led to launching multiple successful companies.
What is your unique contribution and worth to your industry? When you discover your true worth, you will discover how to take that passion above and beyond the bonds of your current career — and potentially change your industry completely.
Moving Boldy With Personal Agility to Discover Your True Worth
Are you ready to truly take advantage of a passion-struck life? Once you discover your true worth and make the commitment to yourself to move toward your passion, it’s time to take the steps necessary to step into the unknown.
This may lead you to leave your career and move into an entirely new industry. Or perhaps, like Maria, it calls you to flip the table on your own company and demand that your daily life reflect your newfound worth.
Maria tells John a story in her Passion Struck™ podcast episode about the moment she discovered her worth wasn’t matching her company’s investment in her.
“Regardless of how hard I worked, I would never reach a level where I was competitively paid for my work. I decided at that moment that I would give the company two choices — match my salary to pay what other companies were offering me, or lose one of their most talented and productive team members.”
Quote by Maria Matarelli
What happened?
Maria opened the eyes of her company to learn how valuable she truly was — and they made sure not to lose her. While she eventually moved on to bigger endeavors, that moment of worth-driven passion changed the course of her life forever.
Passion-stuck leaders dare to take leaps of faith in the face of the status quo. When you truly learn that your experience, expertise, and passion are driven toward a specific outcome, you will desire nothing more than to invest your life in that single pursuit. So what will you do now that you’ve discovered your passion-struck worth? Will you follow Maria’s lead to demand nothing less than the best for your one life to live?
In a world that is desperate for passion-struck leaders, it is time for you to take your true worth and invest it in the future.
More From John Miles and Maria Matarelli
To listen to Maria’s entire story, subscribe to the Passion Struck™ podcast and catch this episode where John and Maria Matarelli discuss “Using Personal Agility to Unlock Your Serial Entrepreneur Kingdom” now in the iTunes store or on Spotify.
For more inspirational stories and messages like this, check out https://passionstruck.com.