You’ve got to find your voice and speak about it. Like Abraham Lincoln. He ran for President, and became president, but he couldn’t do it before he found his voice. He couldn’t succeed. He ran for President; got turned away. Ran for President; got turned away. That’s when he made the realization that they weren’t going to let him speak. See there were only 2 political parties back then, the Democratic Party and the Wig Party. The Wig Party was the predominant party. It was the biggest, baddest, fat cat on the hill, and it needed to be knocked over. So what did Lincoln decide to do? Well he said to himself,

“If they are not going to let me speak, I will find my voice and I will speak on my own.”

That’s how the Republican Party was born, because he did find his voice didn’t he? He found his voice and created his own political party, dedicated to the salvation of the Republic, which is why he named it the Republican Party, and it grew. It grew so big and so fast that, well, the Wig Party isn’t around today is it? See the leaders of the Wig Party never had a chance because they made two fatal decisions, two giant mistakes. The underestimated the power of the little guy and the overestimated their position of power. Because of this, they didn’t do much to worry about this new upstart Lincoln and his Party, but Lincoln had a voice behind that Party. More importantly, he had a voice and a burning desire to be heard. The Wig Party couldn’t keep up, they couldn’t drown out Lincoln’s voice and as a result the Republican party toppled them, and they collapsed completely. Today, the Wig Party no longer exists does it, but the Republican Party, the Party of Lincoln, stands as the Predominant Party in the Land, having been around now for 166 years and counting. As a comparison, the Wig Party that Henry Clay began lasted only 27 years before they couldn’t compete with the Republican Voice any longer and had to dissolve.

What’s the point of this little history lesson folks? The point is that Lincoln changed the world when he found his voice. You’ve GOT TO FIND. . . your voice. I found my voice and things picked up for me. Look, I’m a financial broker so I can help you out with all sorts of things. You need a loan for your business, I can help you out. You have a purchase order you need to get financed in order to fill the order and get your business running strong, I can do that for you. You have equipment you need need to buy, I’m your guy. The point being that I’ve got you covered, right, but that isn’t where my voice is. Through self reflection and study, I discovered my voice is in helping struggling small to medium sized business owners get money to grow their business with Factoring.

Look if you’re a small business owner, and you’ve been in business less than 5 years, the odds of you making it to 6 are not in your favor. 97.5% of all businesses fail within the first 5 years. How does one prevent that? The answer is simple, money. You have to have money to keep moving forward, and if you don’t have it, you need to borrow it in some cases. The issue is that every lender out there knows the same stats, so if your business is less than 5 years old you will find it difficult to get them to lend you money without giving up some personal assets, like your house for example, as collateral. That process sucks, and it can be both frustrating and daunting.

And that’s where my voice starts to be heard. Off in the distance, but growing stronger and stronger; louder and louder. Having trouble accessing working capital, I can use your invoices to get you money without needing a loan. Boom! I’ve got my hook in you, and now you’re calling ME to know more. The point here is that I know my voice, and how to use it. You need to do the same. You need to, no scratch that, you MUST find your voice. My voice was in the major product that everyone eventually wanted me to talk to them about, which was Factoring. No matter where the conversation started, inevitably, we would end up discussing it at some point because it provides a quick way to access cash without having to need a loan involved, or putting up anyone’s house as collateral. It just makes sense. So that was it. That was the one. That was the place I knew I needed to focus my voice on. Factoring was going to be my podium to speak from. Factoring was going to be my golden ticket to educate and deliver quick, effective results to each of my clients from.

You know, I don’t even market myself as a financial broker any longer, I focused my voice and I focused my brand to being a Factoring Business Broker. Sure, I can still help my clients with all of those other things as before, but marketing myself as such is like taking a shotgun and firing it at a target 50 meters out. You might hit the target. You might hit the bullseye even. If you’re doing it that way however, there is no consistency with the hits, and you can easily miss the target all together. Focusing on the key aspect of your voice replaces that shotgun with a rifle however, and instead of taking a shot at everything to see what hits, now you can aim your shot and hit your bullseye every time.

When I made this decision. When I decided to focus my energies solely on Factoring, things turned a corner for me. My productivity was more focused and more dedicated. My productivity increased. My returns increased. Because what did I do? I took a shot gun blast of random, but connected, offerings, and streamlined and focused them into a rifle’s bullet cutting straight through the air hit my mark, to find my niche market, to find my crowd. Then I come over and talk to Terry, and Terry taught me that I could take this voice of mine and turn it into an informational product, and the whole thing just clicked. Now I have a secondary part to my voice that further enhances the message and further proves how much of an expert in my field that I am because, not only am I a broker, but I am the broker who trains other brokers. Oh, this guy Chris Miller trains other people to become factoring brokers like himself so obviously this is the guy for my business. This is the guy who’ll get us the money we need. Right, I mean that’s the mentality my clients have. I’m professional, I’m punctual, I know my stuff, and I am a professional instructor to teach others to do what I do. Clearly hiring me is a good move. So finding my voice, streamlining it into what I really needed it to be, setting myself up as the expert in that voice and then speaking that voice to people has brought me fantastic results. Just fantastic results. And that’s how my business started to pick up. Find your voice, and speak it. Speak it loud.

I love what I do, and it shows. One of my brokers the other day told me, and I thought it was a very sweet thing to say, she said:

“The energy I have is amazing. She wishes she had that level of energy.”

It was a very sweet thing for her to say, but it made me think about it for a second, and you know I have the same energy now as I did when I was 19 years old. I’m a go, go, go, kind of guy. Why is that? Why am I like that? Because I have always loved my life. I’ve always loved the things I always had to do; and it’s not that my life was always perfect. I’ve had obstacles to overcome. I’ve had challenges to face same as anyone else, same as all of you. I’ve had disasters to recover from. You show me a guy who’s never had a problem in his life, that’s the same guy who’s never lived a life. He’s never transferred out of his comfort zone, and if you never come out of your comfort zone, you never feel the joy, the high, of accomplishment. You’re not living a life unless you are feeling pain, because you’re not feeling pain unless you are venturing out. I’m not just talking in business, I’m talking life in general here. Unless you go out there, unless you put yourself out there on that precarious limb with its creaking and popping, like it could break at any moment, you won’t feel the highs or the lows. You’ll just be left standing there watching while others around you are out there living.

We get one shot, that we can guarantee, at this life. Some cultures think you come back over and over again. Some cultures think this is all there is and then that’s it. You can like several of lives, or you can live a couple of lives, or you can live one life. . . or you can live no life by playing it safe like the guy we were just talking about. The truth of it is that nobody can tell you this answer definitively, but we ARE guaranteed this one life to do everything we can do with. We get one shot at this one, that we can guarantee you can do something with. That’s right here, right now, the one we’re living. What happens after that, I can’t say. I’m not qualified to say because I’m still busy LIVING this one. If I see it, I can believe it, and what I see is that I got one shot at it, and that I know I’m going to die one day. The question then becomes, do I want to die knowing I had never lived. The answer is I do not. How to I ensure that, I find my voice and make it happen.

Find your voice, but then, don’t just be content having found your voice, go out there and speak your voice. You’ve got to go out there and tell the world that you are here. You’ve got to let them know that you have something to say because it won’t have any effect on anybody if you aren’t out there speaking it. It won’t have any effect on anyone if you keep that beautiful, wonderful, intelligent voice of yours all to yourself. Where would be today if Abraham Lincoln had not started the Republican party so that he could be heard and keep the country together, and find equality along the way to bring us together as a better group of people than we were at the time. You've got to find your voice, and once you do, you’ve got to use it.