We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sterling Hawkins a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Sterling, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with a fun one – what’s something you believe that most people in your industry (or in general) disagree with?

Our results, personally and professionally, are defined by one thing and one thing only. It’s not much money you have, who you know or having sheer determination and grit. The X factor that determines our results is: Discomfort. Results are limited by discomfort. Specifically, the discomfort you avoid, the discomfort you deny or the discomfort you simply survive (I call them the discomfort defaults).

I learned that the hard way. My first company became part of this behemoth startup where we raised over USD 550M, achieved a multi-billion dollar valuation. We had the connections. We had the technology. We had the smartest team I’ve ever worked with. And nearly all of us put in 18 hour days of hard work, determination and grit. But it wasn’t enough – our culture embodied the discomfort defaults and led to a collapse — all half-a-billion dollars of cash — gone.

Hard work, connections and cash all might be supporting cast, but the key to success is to confront discomfort head on, that’s what’s going to give you new and potentially breakthrough results.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I didn’t get into writing and speaking and working with company leadership teams on culture on purpose. I fell into as a results of the billion dollar company bankruptcy I was a part of… I spent many dark days trying to understand what happened, how I had fallen so hard, so fast. Not only so I could dig myself out of the hole filled with anxiety and depression I was in, I wanted to be certain it would never happen again. Not that I would never fail, but so I didn’t crash like I had.

One of the things my Mom said often when I was a kid came back to me during those hardest times . It was — “the way out is through” (actually Robert Frost, but to me it’ll always be my Mom). I had to go through the things I feared most and the results I was looking for would be on the other side.

We all have things we’re afraid of. For me at the time it was that I was deathly afraid of public speaking. I was one of those people that would rather have been in the coffin than giving the eulogy. With that phrase in mind — the way out is through — I went big into it. I applied and was accepted to give a keynote for a conference in Singapore (true story, the stars must have aligned). Terrified, I practiced incessantly. In spite of the practice, the terror only seemed to get worse when the day finally came. I heard them call my name, announcing me to the stage. I was so scared I think I may have blacked out, but I did it. And when it was all over, the conference director found me and said: “That’s the best keynote I’ve heard in all my years of doing this!” To this day, I don’t think he was in the same keynote I gave. But he did go on to tell all of his conference director friends about me and it was the beginning of building myself back into the person I am today.

At that moment, I understood deeply that my Mom was right, the way out is through. My work today all stems from that moment sharing my experience, now years of research and working with countless companies to help others go through whatever they might be facing to come out better, stronger and faster on the other side. #NoMatterWhat.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

I speak to hundreds of thousands of people every year, sharing my story and what I’ve learned from it. As amazing as that is to growing my clientele, it’s those people who grab onto the #NoMatterWhat system and use it to create turnarounds, breakthroughs or even make seemingly impossible results possible in their lives and business, that stand out and sharing those stories serves as my strongest growth strategy.

One of our #NoMatterWhat Community members came to the US from Cambodia. He didn’t speak English, had no money and ended up living in the projects of Southern California. Over years, he worked his way up. Learning the language, finding jobs to make ends meet, and doing whatever it took. That work has paid off. Today, he’s the founder of Cambodian Beef Jerky Company, Psych-Ko’s Jerky. He’s happily married, has several children, a house, a sports car, and he’s selling more beef jerky than he can keep up with.

I can’t change someone’s life in a keynote. But it can be a turning point for someone to start changing their own life and business. And over time, they’ll be the ones to create the standout results. It’s my job to share them.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Well, resiliency definitely tracks with all my background! I’ve found that there comes a time when strategy fails, motivation runs out and the struggle just becomes too much. That’s where I was when that multi-billion dollar company I was a part of went bankrupt.

It’s not just rising in the face of that adversity that’s true resilience, it’s being willing to give up the parts of yourself — your identity, your views, your ways of being and acting — that contributed to you falling in the first place. Everyone wants to be the Phoenix rising from the ashes, but nobody wants to burn (figuratively of course) the things about themselves that are no longer serving them. It’s the underrated traits of humbleness, gratitude, love and acceptance that give you access to letting go of those things that are no longer working to continually rise, each time stronger than before.

I had to surrender to the fact that I had failed and what I personally did that contributed to it. I had to surrender the pain of what I had been through. I had to surrender the embarrassment I had in sharing about it. And what called me forward was getting connected to my purpose: people living courageously, #NoMatterWhat.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sterlinghawkins.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sterling_hawkins/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SterlingHawkinsPublic/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sterlinghawkins/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/sterlinghawkins?lang=en
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCx-Swqd9Jdfjq89I4_RJvyw