Create a plan and work backwards.

"Most of us are gambling on the biggest risk of all: that one day we can buy the freedom to do what we want later in life."-Jake Ducey

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• What percentage of people are actively disengaged from their work?
  
• Career capital: what is it and why should you be creating it?
  
• Jake failed an English class in college: true or false?
  
• Why did he retype The Great Gatsby?
  
• What is the 10 minute rule and how do you apply it?
  
• And so much more...
  

If you met someone who had dropped out of college and written a book at age 19, would you think they knew enough for the book to be any good or would you dismiss them? Not only did our guest for today's show write and publish a book at 19, he published his second book by the ripe old age of 23.

That guest is Jake Ducey and that second book is The Purpose Principles. He joins us to talk about finding your purpose, taking action and productivity. We discuss those topics and so much more on this episode of The Art of Charm.

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Jake Ducey was like most of us: he was raised to believe the road to success meant graduating high school with good grades, going to college and then getting a good job until you retired. And then maybe when you retired you'd have enough money and enough time to really do the things you love to do.

But not long into his college career Jake ditched that notion. He realized he didn't want to be another cog in the wheel, and that's all that college was preparing him to be. After reading a copy of Jack Canfield's The Success Principles, he was inspired to quit school and strike out on his own.

By age 19 he had written his first book and was turned down by a myriad of publishers. They all told him he couldn't possibly know enough to write a good book and they passed on his work. So he took matters into his own hands and self-published and self-promoted. He was his only publicist and he had no marketing budget to speak of, but he launched his book into Amazon's top 300. By the time his second book was ready he was offered a book deal, becoming the youngest motivational author at his publishing company.

Along the way he's gathered the stories of our modern day successes like Oprah, Brad Pitt, Jim Carey and The Beatles. He's been mentored and learned under the tutelage of great authors like Jack Canfield and John Gray. He's taken valuable lessons he's learned from them and passed along that knowledge to the public.

And today he passes along much of that knowledge to us. We touch on several topics in this episode, one of those being how to take action despite fear. He says men like John Gray and Jack Canfield are afraid too, they just don't let it stop them. They take action and have courage, inspite of their fear.

Also it's important to understand you'll never get rid of fear, none of us will, so we have to move forward even when we feel it. Fear is a natural part of being alive, but we can face it and move ahead even when it's present.

Jake also says he's learned to ask himself one simple question in any scenario when he's afraid: "What's the best that could happen?". Rather than focusing on the worst, which is what most of us do, he focuses on the best. And if you really need to address that worst case scenario, Jake recommends addressing it, preparing for it and then focusing on the best possible outcome and hoping for that.

There are several other lessons he provides on today's episode but the final one we'll cover here is his productivity. How in the world can someone so young accomplish so much? He falls back on lessons from other motivational authors and uses the 10-minute rule and the 5 tasks a day rule. Take your To-Do list and find the items that will take you 10 (or 15) minutes to do and separate them from the others. And every day focus on 5 things you will do today to move you towards the life you really want.

Jake and I also talk about how to lock down your purpose, how to create your most successful and fulfilling year (the one question to ask for this) and a whole heckuva lot more! Thanks to Jake for joining us and sharing his inspirational story and insightful knowledge. As always, thank you for being here and we'll see you next time.

If you enjoyed this session of The Art of Charm Podcast, let Jake know by clicking on the link below and sending him a quick shout out on Twitter:

Click here to thank Jake on Twitter!

Jake Ducey's web site
The Purpose Principles, by Jake Ducey
Jake Ducey on Twitter

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