Success Defined: Mapping Your Journey to What Truly Matters

My guest, Dave Lubelczyk is a corporate escape artist dedicated to helping individuals break free from societal expectations and live authentically. His philosophy centers around empowering people to create a roadmap to realize their dreams, guiding them to define and follow their own unique paths. 

Society tells us to measure success in terms of amassing riches. But Dave believes that success should be measured by experiences and fulfillment. Therefore, one's success is measured by how well we are able to leverage our resources of time, money, energy, and freedom to give us the experiences and fulfillment we seek in our lives. 

During the discussion, listeners will learn what is needed to map out their unique success journey and create a plan that will give them the life they want when they want it. 

You can learn more about Dave at  www.TheDreamCatapult.com. Get your free Dream Life Handbook here. Sign up for the discounted Liberation Launchpad here.

Transcript

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Welcome to The Water Trough, where we can't make you drink, but we will make you think. My name is Ed Drawster, the Small Business Doctor, and I'm really excited you chose to join me here as we discuss topics that are important for small business folks just like you. If you're looking for ideas, inspiration, and possibility, you've come to the right place. Join us as we take steps to help you create the healthy business that you've always wanted. Hi, folks. Welcome back to the water trough. This is Ed Drozdo. It's a pleasure to have you here. And I'm joined today by my friend, Dave Lebelzik. Dave is the dream catapult. He's a corporate escape artist. Dedicated to helping individuals break free from societal expectations. And to live authentically. His philosophy centers around empowering people to create a roadmap to realize their dreams, guiding them to define and follow their own unique paths. Dave believes that success should be measured by experiences and fulfillment. Therefore, one's success is measured by how well we're able to leverage our resources of time, money, energy, and freedom to give us the experiences and fulfillment we seek in our lives. Under that definition, success is highly personal and unique to everyone. Our personal definition of success constantly changes as we move through the various chapters and seasons of our lives. During this discussion, listeners will learn what is needed to map out their unique journey and create a plan that will give them the life they want when they want it. Dave, welcome, let's start this journey. Thanks for having me on. It's a pleasure to have you. So, Dave, let's take a look at this concept of individual success, success being within our grasp. Are you suggesting that we're really caught up in everything around us that are not aware of the fact that we do have control over this thing? Yeah, I think it started with our parents, go to college, get a good job, get a pension, the American dream, right? Stay in corporate America to retire with a gold watch or a rocking chair, and everything will be taken care of and we'll have exactly everything we want in life. That may have been, the way it was, but things have really changed over time. And I don't even know if it really always was that way. I think that, we've kind of lost our own personal view of what success is, we were following society's scripted path. And I think. Especially in this go, go, hustle culture that we've created for ourselves. We're really not living the lives that we want. And I talked to so many people that they just don't have the freedom and energy to do the things they want. So even if they have the financial resources from their corporate job, or, ones that lead an entrepreneurial venture, They don't have the time and the energy and the freedom to really get out there and do the things they want to do. You're saying that people are Basically following the course, that's been set for them by someone else. Is that fair to say? Yeah. We get these scripted roles that we fill in life, and we're, going along on this predetermined path, I'm going to be a lawyer. I'm going to be a doctor. I'm going to be an accountant. I'm going to be a fireman, whatever. And we fall into those roles. I find so many people that, are in their thirties, forties, fifties, even, facing retirement that are like, I never really lived the life that I wanted to live. there's some research by a nurse. In Australia and she talked to people on their deathbed and, the number one regret was, living somebody else's life followed by, I worked too much. Living someone's life. And I worked too much. that's definitely something that, on your deathbed, it's too late to go back and change But how often do we think about those things as we are living actively? Yeah, the term bucket list is you're going to kick the bucket. So you've got, you know, three months to live. So I've got to do all these things that I haven't done. But why do we have to wait till we have terminal cancer or we had a near death experience or we retire, who wants to backpack across the country or through Europe when you're in your 60s? I'm in my 50s and I don't want a backpack. I want a hotel, yet, if you wanted to do that, if that's an experience you want to have, that's something you want to do in your 20s or maybe in your 30s, I've got one client, she's in her 40s. She wants to hike the entire length of the Appalachian trail, but has a business she can't walk away from Why can't we do those things when we want to do it? It's because we've fallen into these roles, whether it be a corporate role where we, are chained to our desk and we have the hustle culture and working our way up the corporate ladder, or whether it's the entrepreneurial role make six figures, all the business gurus out there and make six figures or, scale, scale is the big thing, and they all sell this, it's all going to be passive income and you're going to be. Sitting on the beach, sipping, pina coladas, but you and I have been in the consulting business for a very long time. And then how many people do we know that sit regularly on the beach and sip pina coladas, being a small business owner, being an entrepreneur, It's a lot of work, and unless you really start thinking about, I do want to sit on the beach regularly and sip pina coladas, you get caught up even in the entrepreneurial world into this treadmill that you've built of scaling and adding more, I met a gentleman the other day He's got one coffee shop. He's looking to add 5 more. And I said, why? And he said, well, because I can scale and everybody says it's a million dollar idea, And I'm like, But what don't you have in life right now that those five coffee shops are going to give you? And more importantly, what do you have in life right now with time with your kids and time with your family that's going to go away when you have six times the amount of coffee shops you have right now? How do you respond? He said, I need to talk to you more. I've heard things like that before. you talk about re imagining success in the case of this individual. apparently he was of the notion that, yeah, that's what you're supposed to do. But, these things are so rooted in us, the idea of what success means, and it's something that's inserted into our brains at such an early age that we've got a lot of, a lot of pushing back to do here to be able to move beyond that, just to clear out the clutter so that we can start to think about what success means to us. Yes. Yeah. I mean, a colleague of mine just said you pick the hardest thing to ever do, which is buck everything that we've ever learned in life. And yet I've taken the mantle of being the leader on living the life authentically living life. You want building a crafting a life that you want to live? It's so sad to see people that look back at their life, on their deathbed and say, I live someone else's life or I worked too much and I missed out on my kids growing up that's why 22 years ago was actually last week, 22 years ago, last week, I walked into my boss's office and said, I'm done. She said, for the day, I said, no, forever. And it was because I had an infant, I almost missed my first father's day cause I was traveling why is that the case? So then we're like, oh, I'm going to be an entrepreneur, And then I ended up creating an even bigger hamster wheel for myself. I was, my own boss. I'm gonna be my own boss and be able to do whatever. And then, shoot, I need to, bring in a certain amount of revenue. I need to scale. I need to build this. And then I was. Remissing things again. And I had to look at it and change. And so a lot of what I'm working with and teaching people these days is from 22 years of either mistakes I've made or mistakes that people I've worked with have made and helping them to not make those mistakes when they decide that enough is enough and I want to live authentically and not work too much and live the life I want to live. I think stories are particularly important in conveying. details to people, you walked into your boss's office. You said, I'm done not for the day, but for good. What was the moment of truth for you? When you said I'm done for good. How'd that come about? Extreme burnout and missing out on family. Okay. So you'd had enough exposures to that, the burnout and the family misses and so on and so forth it accumulated, I presume, and just got to a point where you said this can't go on. Yep. Okay. And for a lot of people, that's what happens, and unfortunately, when it happens that way, you don't have the plan in place. To make sure it doesn't happen again. So whether you quit and start your own business, or you quit and find another job, or you, just call a headhunter and get another job. If you don't really think about what's the life I want and how is this. Earning stream, we'll call it, whether it be a job or a business. How is this earning stream going to support that? Because really, in order to live the life you want to have, you need to have freedom and money. And so you need to make sure that whatever you're doing gives you the freedom and money in the various chapters and seasons of your life when you need it. You know, people talk about work life balance and they think about it on a day to day basis. Like, did I get to take, an extra long lunch? Or did I get a long weekend? But Really, the balance comes over time. it's the day I need to go to my kids dance recital, I'm able to take the day off. The day I want to buy a house, I have enough for the down payment. if you plan out your life and you plan out how are you going to use your time and energy to make sure that you have the money when you need it, to make sure you have the freedom when you need it, you're able to actually build a life that does give you what you want So. In your case, It came to this crescendo and you made this choice. You did not know, as you said, at that point, what the plan was, you just knew that it couldn't continue on as it did. And I think most people would agree that in itself is enough to keep us from even having that conversation with ourselves. most people would look at this and say, if I do. leave my job today, I'm going to crumble and they tamp it down and say, fine, I'll get over it or it will get better or what have you. Wouldn't you say? Yeah. there's a quote and I am going to kind of mess it up. I should actually keep it tattooed on my back of my hand because I use it a lot. But it's the certainty of misery is better than the uncertainty of getting out of the misery. Interesting. Say that one more time, please. Most people see the certainty of misery as better than the uncertainty of getting out of the misery. Interesting. And so we stay in what we know miserable though it might be. Yeah, because it's comforting. It's safe I know what to expect tomorrow. I know my job's gonna suck tomorrow I know i'm gonna miss out on my kids baseball game. but I got a steady the one that always gets me is a lot of people when they're thinking about becoming an entrepreneur they say How am I gonna have health insurance? I can't leave my job because I need health insurance. And I'm like, that's just an expense. When we build the business model, we make sure that we build in enough revenue to cover health insurance. when we create a transition plan from you leaving your corporate job to, your new entrepreneurial venture, we make sure you have a pool of money to pay for that health insurance during the transition. It's a planning thing. it's not an obstacle. if you plan for it, you can make it happen. Now, might it keep you from leaving your corporate job for three months, six months while you build up maybe, or maybe you already have it in your savings maybe it gives you a little bit less cushion for ramping up and getting clients, but we know that, and the planning is what allows you to make sure that you're able to make that transition. So we're starting here, in the journey as reimagining what success can be. And that, starts with recognizing that the current state is not acceptable. in short, it's not success. and that leads us to the acknowledgment that success is a personal thing. It's not something defined by someone else or something else. It's something over which we do, in fact, have control. when it comes to that personalized definition of success, When you're engaging with clientele, how do you guide them through that notion of defining success for themselves? it's a 12 month, Transition from your corporate job to the business that you want to have and it could go longer depending upon, you need to save up for insurance or stuff, but it's usually about a 12 month process and the 1st 3 months are planning and the 1st month is don't tell me anything about your business and I don't want to know anything about your business. I don't care about your business idea. It could be an ice cream shop. It could be a biotech company. I want to know what you want your life to look like. So we spend you and your significant other, because if you're planning your life, you need anybody that's, emotionally, romantically, and financially tied to you in on this conversation. Cause you're theoretically going to be doing this together. so we spend the first month talking about what is your life going to look like. What does it look like over the next 20 to 30 years, depending upon your age? and what is each five year chapter in those 20 to 30 years look like? What are going to be the resources of money and, freedom are you going to need in those timeframes? What does success look like for that? a lot of people are like, Oh, money is not important to me. I'm one of those people money is resource. Not a metric for me. working with people having an impact. that's great overall. The course of my career is money is not in my definition of success for me, but there could be, where I need to buy a new car, there could be a year period or two year period where money is success for me because I got to ramp up the number of clients I bring in so that I can afford a car cheapest ones, 25, 000. So, I got to find 25, 000 more money. Or at least enough to cover a car payment. So success in this small window, maybe the next three months or a year or two years might be all about revenue coming. And so we look at what is the definition of success in those different time frames so that we can have a clear idea of what does this business need to look like. So that's month one is really understanding what success looks like, what your life looks like, what experiences you want to have, what resources of money and freedom are you going to need? And then we start talking about the results. So month two is. Okay. What's your business idea? Well, I want to open a restaurant. I want to open an ice cream pile. I want to open, I've got this invention. I've got, okay, great. Let's talk about that. How long is it going to take you to ramp up sales? Is it going to be R& D involved? do you need to buy a building? Do you need to rent a building? What do we need for upfront capital? Then we weigh that against. you have this much in savings. You can live for six months without any money coming in, or you only have one month of savings. So we need a business that can, get you up and running and get you this X number of dollars in that time frame. And so we look at that business and go, Ed, that ice cream power idea, you wanted a lot of freedom. But you're going to be working in the ice cream park because you don't have enough money to and we don't have enough margin in it to hire employees. So you're going to be the guy scooping ice cream and you wanted a lot of freedom. Can we rethink the idea? Can we rethink? Do you want employees? Do you actually want to have ice cream power? Or do you want to do something different? And so we really start pressure testing the business idea to see if it's going to fit it. Your life, but only your life today, because a lot of people do like today, but is it going to fit your life over time? Is it going to scale, if you need a lot more revenue, and that's why, do you want to consistently drive a Hyundai or do you want to have Bentleys, you want to have a mansion or do you want to live in a very modest, apartment there is no definition of success, it's your definition of success. I met a guy. I'll give you this scenario. would you like to travel anywhere you wanted in the country, visit museums and go to restaurants and meet new people and, go everywhere from the beaches of Florida to, the beaches of California to spend some time on Cape Cod to hike the mountains. Sounds like a good life for a lot of people. Yet the gentleman I met most people would call homeless because all he has is a backpack and he earns just enough money to live that life. He worked, for a while raise some money so we can get a plane ticket or a train ticket or buy a motorcycle for a little while to drive. most people would be like, I wouldn't want to live that life. he sleeps in a tent a lot of the time, but that's the life he wants to live. And by his definite success, he's extremely successful. Because he's 28 years old, he's traveling the country and he's doing what he wants to do. He's like, I have everything I need in this backpack. And by societal standards, this guy's homeless, and yet talking to him, he was the most successful person I've ever talked to, because he was living exactly the life he wanted to live. Now, will that change over time? He didn't become my client, so we didn't have a big talk on what he wanted to do down the line, and whether he wanted to buy a house, although we did exchange numbers, and he actually wants to start a nonprofit, and he was asking me some advice on who to talk to to start a nonprofit., So he's got ambition. It's not that he's, a hobo for the rest of his life. That's just his success right now in this chapter of his life and he is truly also an individual. He has no obligations to a spouse, Children and things like that. So he truly is living his own. Personal authentic life at this point. And yes, as you say, things may change down the road. But what I'm hearing you say is that living his authentic life now will give him perhaps the psychological freedom later to accept the fact that when things change, it won't be this way. It seems to me that this authenticity Be it simplistic or complex is something that clears out space for things to come along. Does that make sense to you? Yeah, that's exactly it. He's not going to sit on his deathbed and say, damn, I wish I had done that backpacking across the United States. And he's actually planned to go to Europe for a while, but he won't say I regret not doing that because he did it. Right now, if he truly wanted to have a family in his 20s, and he did this instead, now he might have regrets. So he needs to make sure that this backpacking thing that he's doing is authentic to him. and it stays authentic. But, two years down the line, he might meet somebody, want to start a family, want to buy a house. And he gets to change and do that, but if those are important to him, that also needs to be on his list because you can get caught up in, and we'll use him as a severe example, he could be backpacking until he's 65 and then look back and go,, I always wanted to have a family and I always wanted to have a house and I never did that, Which would be the exact opposite of a lot of us that got caught up in the corporate machine and bought the house into that and never got to backpack. so there's no right or wrong answers. No, there's not. It's just what do you want? So knowing what you want in life is going to allow you to start crafting that earning stream, that job, that Business, whatever it's going to be to give you the life you want to have so that when we do get to our deathbed, we don't say I live somebody else's life and I work too much. So I believe what you're, promoting is that we would be forward looking, not just thinking about the current moment, but looking at it in totality of what we've got and that every little bit that we do on our own terms is going to prepare us to be able to go forward, it's going to serve us down the road if we're able to do what we authentically believe is right for us. Is that correct? If you know what you want, you can wake up every morning and go, what are the five things, three things, two things, one thing I need to do today. That's going to give me one baby step closer to having that. mansion to being able to backpack across the country. And a lot of people think that when I talk about this, I'm promoting the bohemian lifestyle and money doesn't matter. No money is a factor, but depending upon what lifestyle you want to have determines how much money you need. And so by knowing it, you can now set the plan of, Oh shoot, I'm not making enough money. To have the vacation house in Maine that I want to be able to go and fish and kayak on the lake or whatever I want to do. What am I doing to start moving towards that? And that could be changing your career. That could be trying to get the promotion at work, or it could be quitting your job and starting your own business. Okay. So Dave, you have coined a term sovereignpreneurship. Let's talk about that. I know. In general, we've danced with the concept, but let's get right down to that. Sovereign preneurship. My definition is it takes the word sovereignty or sovereign and entrepreneurship and puts it together. It's creating a self motivated life of freedom and In the realm of entrepreneurship, it's building a business that's supporting the life that you want to live. So everything that you're doing is helping you move towards that life and making sure that you never have the some days, you never have the what ifs and the some days, or the deathbed regrets. it's solving that problem. You're looking at what do I want and you're building this Entrepreneurship model to really make sure that you don't go. Well, someday, because we all have our some days, someday I'm gonna own a Harley. Someday I'm gonna go to Europe. Someday I'm going to, you know, the woman hiked the Appalachian Trail I mentioned earlier, but if you don't put someday on the calendar, someday never comes. Right. so the sovereign preneurship, as you say, it's self motivated entrepreneurship, but entrepreneurship in a manner that supersedes the notion of business. it's the entrepreneurship of life. Okay. And the best way to live a sovereign preneur life is to start your own business because you're in the driver's seat. It's a lot harder to live a self motivated life when you're my boss, Ed, because I'm living by your definition of what You want my life to be. you've crafted your business to give you the life you wanted. So me working for you means that I'm not necessarily going to be totally in control of how I'm going to have freedom and money when I want it. so entrepreneurship is the best way to do it. But there's a lot of ways to do it in this day and age. It can be working part time in a company. It could be having a side gig and it could be working the gig economy. Like you could be an Uber driver. I've met so many, I've traveled a lot lately with my business, which I crafted my business to be able to allow me to travel. And because of that, I ride in a lot of Lyfts and a lot of Ubers. And I've met a lot of people that have. Left jobs and are doing this because it gives them the freedom that they want and some of them are now doing this while they're grafting their other entrepreneurial venture that they want or some of them. This is just what they're doing.. I'd like your philosophy. I agree with your philosophy. I think it's really important for people to develop a clarity about themselves, who they are, what they're trying to accomplish, And I think it's often overlooked for the various things that we've talked about, but what are some of the pitfalls or obstacles in this process? What kinds of things might come along or have you observed that might make it awkward for people either to start or to continue down this path. Biggest obstacle is fear. Fear holds all of us back. The fear of taking a step, the fear of it won't work, fear comes in the form of imposter syndrome. Why am I the one to start this business? Or why would anybody buy from me? fear is the biggest one. Back to that quote about the certainty of misery, because we're afraid that we do something else. It might not work or we're gonna end up worse off than we are. Or maybe we'll succeed. a lot of people have the fear of success too. What if this actually works and I get to live the life I wanna live, and we self-sabotage. Whenever I worked with coaches or when I was working on my business talking to other entrepreneurs or consultants or whatever, and they're always like, what's getting in your way? And I'm like, me.,, the biggest hurdle that most of us face is procrastination or, mindset or, not getting up and doing those things there's a book, a binder that they use on a daily basis to make sure they're staying on track. And if you don't bring that up every day and track all the stuff you're doing and do the things you said you were going to do that day, then you're not going to get to where you need to go., You can't run a marathon the first day you decided to run a marathon, you've got to train, you've got to do little things every day, the book that everybody's reading these days is atomic habits and they talk about, in order to start running a marathon, start by putting your sneakers on every morning without fail. Yeah. Your sneakers on every morning, then go outside and then walk around the block and then run around the block. and as you do those small things, all of a sudden they add up. I've got a lot of friends that have, decided to run marathons and by doing that, they were able to run a marathon, but you don't go right away and run a marathon. And so a lot of this planning helps you to figure out what is that put on my sneakers for my dream life, for my goals, for starting a business. I appreciate the things that you're saying, and I can also relate to them, especially the part about, well, I'm not going to start running marathons at this stage in my life, but just the fact of taking baby steps that might've seemed difficult before, and, staying at it, recognizing the baby steps add up is a big deal for me. And certainly for all of us, if we choose to acknowledge that. So, Our time is coming to an end I'd like to ask you if there's anything that you'd like to leave us with anything, that needs reinforcement just whether you work with me or you work with somebody else plan, think about what you want out of your life. Start there and really plan it out. Take some time to really plan and understand what you want. Talk to the important people in your life and make sure that you know what you want your life to be. And then start looking at your job or your business idea and say. Is it going to give me that? What are those success metrics? And don't make money your success metrics. Make it impact, make it creativity, make it freedom from whatever is important for you. Time in the woods, helping others, those are all huge success metrics that you can have. Understanding what those are will allow you to then say, What I'm doing right now, the job, the business that I currently have, does it fit and what does it need to look like in order for me to really live that life so that you don't end up being what the nurse said, which is living someone else's life and working too much because you only want to work just enough to give you the money and freedom that you need to do what you want to do anything above and beyond that. You can't take with you to the grave, right? And we've all heard that one for so long, too. That one's always made sense. Well, Dave, I want to thank you once again for being my guest today. And how might we reach you to learn more about you and what it is that you do? The best way to reach me, all of my contact information and everything is there as well as a little speech. Synopsis of what I do is at the dream catapult. com. And if people want to get a jumpstart on it, on doing this process, they can actually download the dream life handbook. Dot com. They go to the dream it's a PDF download. It's a self guided thing. It asks you some. probing questions related to the process so people can go to the dream life handbook and download that. that is fantastic. Dave, once again, thank you so much. My guest today, Dave Lebelsik, the dream catapult. And I want to thank you for the time that you spent with us. I also, want to, encourage folks who are listening to remember That you have vastly more control than you might think that you do. there's always somebody else telling us what to do and how to do, but you're the one that's going to be doing them. So listen carefully to the guidance and advice that Dave has given us here. I think it's well worth. Everyone's wild. Thank you again. This is Ed draws to the small business doctor. And until next time I want to wish you a healthy business. 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