Business Coach : The Best Group To Lead You
-If I’m in the military right now, if I’m in a boat and I’m overseas, if I’m serving my duty, if I’m active duty, if I’m maybe reservist, if I’m in the military and I feel like I can’t really start to have success yet because I got to serve my time of I’ve got to finish my duty. Or maybe I can’t start my own business because I need to finish my– you made the jump from military to success in entrepreneurship. With the help of a business coach.
How is success still a choice if I’m maybe a civil servant? Maybe I work for the government in some capacity or I’m in the military. How is success still a choice if I’m in the constructs of civic duty, of a civil servant there. How can I still achieve success if I’m on a military base? Or I’m kind of–
-Well, it goes back to what you sort of alluded to. Because success can mean different things to different people. A business coach can help you either way. And if we are talking in terms of being gainfully employed as a soldier, but at the same time you realize that that will eventually end. What will be the next step of my life?
The military is not necessarily known as a place of self-starters simply because the mission has been clearly defined by others. And you’re told what to do, and you’re expected to carry it out. But to get into the world of work, being an entrepreneur or an incredible employee, being a self-starter is very important. And all of that, in my opinion, requires entrepreneurial thinking. And that process can start, really, wherever you are. It can really start where you are. With the help of a business coach.
-So I can choose to start laying the framework or the foundation for success even if I’m in a job right now where I can’t really–
-Most definitely. Most definitely. I have no doubt about that.
-Now rumor has it that you somehow transitioned from the military to the White House. Where you in the White House in some capacity?
CLIFTON TAULBERT: No. What happened– when I was in the military my last two years, I worked at the 89th presidential wing, which was the base that handled all of the flights for the president and the incoming foreign dignitaries. It’s a top-secret position, which just floored me that I had the opportunity to have such a position, working that closely aligned with the President, having to go to the Pentagon, having to work at embassies, and things like that. I mean, that was such a far cry from picking cotton in Glen Allen, Mississippi.
-So you probably had to pinch yourself when you’re working with the Pentagon and this kind of top-secret service level. I mean, that had to be exciting.
-Very exciting. And again, going back to what we said earlier, I dreamed of that when I was picking cotton in the Mississippi delta. I just didn’t know how it would look. That’s why I know that if I have a young man or young lady who’s in the military right now serving our country, and yet they want to do something different, that they can start dreaming of that different right now.
-Right now.
-Right now.
-Now here’s the thing. You actually then transitioned into banking. What was your first job at the bank?
-My first job in the bank– really you may not know this story. But that was an era in America in the ’60s called the Civil Rights Era where there was great demonstration throughout our country. And I had moved to St. Louis by that time. And one of the jobs that I eventually ended up with was at a place called Jefferson Bank and Trust on Washington Avenue.
-Is it still around?
-It’s still there.
-Jefferson Bank and Trust.
-In Washington Avenue in St. Louis, Missouri. Hiring me caused them to move another guy inside the bank who looked like me. Because at that time, there were no African Americans working inside the bank. And that was my very first banking job was a bank messenger. And that’s the a that I hated almost as much as I hated picking cotton.
But I had determined that I’m going to make this the best thing. So I’m out there in the cold, standing in the door with a uniform. And I hear the words that there’s a school you can go to for banking. So I don’t have anything but nerves.
So I go in one day and said, I want to go to that school. Well, they’re shocked because there are no black students at that school. But I said, I want to go to that school. And I eventually went to that school and was an A student at that school.
-So I want to make sure this– I want to make sure that we’re distilling this. Because it’s happened for you. You’re at a job. You’re an employee. You’re working there. And then you see an opportunity, and you pounce on it.
CLIFTON TAULBERT: I pounced.
[BELL DINGS]
-Now in my life, I was working at Target. A guy comes in. I pounced–
-There it is– pounce.
– –on the opportunity, found myself working as a paid intern for an accounting firm where the prerequisite you had to have was you had to be studying accounting. And I was not studying accounting, but yet I landed this internship. But seeing those opportunities and pouncing on it, whether you’re an employee, whether you’re in the military, whether you’re growing up poor, whether you’re poor now, whether you’re poor adult, poor kid, whether you’re living on a farm, on a cotton field– success is a choice no matter where you are.
-And it goes back to the mindset, the growth mindset. That mindset really positions you to see differently, to hear differently, and to expect more from a business coach.
[SWOOSH]