What does it take to truly go for your dreams? On the show today we have Mary Miller, the CEO of JANCOA Janitorial Services and an associate coach with Strategic Coach. In today’s episode, we dive into the stories behind her book, Changing Direction: 10 Choices that Impact Your Dreams, and why it’s important to help others find their passions too.
Embracing change and establishing dreams
If you’re going to go after your dreams, something has to change — otherwise nothing else will. But first, ask yourself: What are your dreams really? You have to get down to the soul of what you want and know why it’s important to you. How will that change the quality of life on your trajectory of where you’re going next?
The dream for your team
Mary shares that one of the first things they do at orientation for new hires at JANCOA is to have every employee fill out a form about their dreams. This unlocks a different energy and much deeper conversations, like when someone said all he wanted to do was be able to read a story to his three-year-old daughter. These are things that people don’t normally think about because everybody’s busy just trying to survive life.
This might mean people will leave because the job isn’t their dream. And that’s okay. In business, you want people who want to be there because that creates and environment and a culture of caring, where the team helps make each other’s lives better.
White space
Mary stresses that free days are important. You need 24-hour periods with no work-related activities. Too often, we get so busy that we don’t even realize that we don’t have a life, and we need that space to free up our minds to ask ourselves: What am I really trying? What am I really being driven for? What do I ultimately want to achieve?
When brick walls get in the way
The brain is the dumbest muscle of the whole body. It only believes what you tell it. When there are obstacles — brick walls — in our lives, the brain can transform to figure out ways and strategies to go over, under, or around that wall.
This is how the Dream Manager Program came about. The obstacle for Mary was turnover and employee retention, which had gotten so bad that a business consultant they’d hired to fix the problem fired them after only two days. But Mary shares that they didn’t have the luxury of feeling sorry for themselves. Their only choice was to keep moving forward and focusing on what they needed to move through the obstacles. And for her, it was choosing to put people first.
What’s really important
Nobody on their deathbed wishes they’d worked harder, or had more success or money. It’s always: I wish I spent more time with my family. I wish I had real friends and took care of myself better. We need to stop waiting for our deathbeds and cultivate our relationships now. That’s when life becomes enjoyable. We aren’t made to be by ourselves, we are made to be part of a community.
Mary also shares how desire and faith play transformative roles in her business and her life, the kind of legacy she wants to create and leave behind, and why our tasks aren’t what make us who we are.
Final thoughts
We are all born with dreams. And we are born with the talents and skills to achieve those dreams. It’s so important to realize that adventure in life is bringing those pieces together.
The first step is just declaring that you want more than you have in your life today and embracing the change that’s about to come.
Resources
Changing Direction: 10 Choices that Impact Your Dreams (Amazon)