This is going to sound like a cliché, but I mean it: your place in the world is unique. Even if you can’t see it, you have to understand that you were born with a certain set of circumstances and genes, and a worldview that is yours and yours alone. You need to seize it. It’s easier to live the norm and go along with the herd. But if I had done that, ONTHEGO (OTG) wouldn’t exist. How could it? The world economy was on its knees; I didn’t know what I was doing. But I seized my strengths, my unique abilities and viewpoint, and started before I was ready. I hustled. I saw my future and knew where I wanted to be. I grabbed life by the reins and I haven’t let go since. ‘But not everybody can do that’, you may be thinking. Which is true. But you don’t need to worry about everybody. You only need to worry about you. Can you do it? Can you see your future and do you know where you want to get to? Do you want to do it? Do you want to create a life where you live your purpose every day? Are you willing to sacrifice some TV time, some chill time, some drinking time, and apply yourself fully to this game of life? Are you willing to give it 120 per cent, so you can live a life that’s full and fulfilling?

It’s time to picture your future. It’s easy to dream. We all love dreaming, but this is beyond idle dreams. It’s about seeing real possible outcomes of who you are, what you care about, what you love doing and who you want to become.

When we struggle to get in touch with this, it’s usually because we’re out of touch with knowing who we really are. Some people go an entire lifetime not feeling they’re truly living the life they want to lead. Give yourself the time and space to get in touch, to uncover your heart’s curiosities, passions and the causes it cares about. Purpose comes from within: it’s a burning desire in your heart. It’s that feeling you get when everything you do is aligned to a greater meaning. If you put effort into your own dreaming, take yourself seriously, trust yourself and set markers, then you’re going to find who you are and the future that you’d most like to reach.

What gets you out of bed every morning? Life is so short. Stop messing around. Yes, you’re going to have days that are hard. But inevitably, if you love what you’re doing, you’re going to become a much better version of yourself.

I found, in both my personal and business life, that once I accepted what I wanted and began to go for it with all of my might, the universe began to open doors. It’s not as mystical as it is practical: we often truly are our own worst enemies. Once we commit to our futures, we begin to see opportunities that we couldn’t see before. We seek out when before we remained silent. We push ourselves to our limits and, hopefully, beyond.

With my severe near-sightedness I can barely see anything at night, even with glasses or contacts on. I’m as blind as a bat. (My fiancée instinctively grabs my hand when it gets dark, to lead me.) When I was a kid and my family was on holiday, camping, I remember needing to go to the toilet at night. Because I couldn’t see a thing I had to envision the path in my mind. I’d walk step by step, seeing the twisting trail solely in my mind’s eye. Sometimes I stumbled and kicked my shins, but I always got to my destination. Like that kid on the path, hurrying along, the adult me is hurrying along his own, self-created path. I envisioned the path I wanted to tread. What path do you want to tread?

What legacy will you leave?

When my business came to fruition and I started making a bigger impact in people’s lives, I was taught the value of visualising your own funeral. What will your life look like at the end? What did you do? What did people think of you? What impact did you make? What do you really want to do in the world for others? Due to the rejection and bullying I experienced growing up I knew I wanted to be important in people’s lives.

One of the biggest common traits I’ve seen in the successful individuals I have learned from is their strong sense of the legacy they want to leave when they pass away. Your legacy doesn’t need to be a company, or stardom, or wealth.

Find your purpose

The definition of purpose is ‘The reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists’.

People often ask, ‘How do I find my purpose in my life?’ I find it helpful to rephrase the question as, ‘How do we accept ourselves?’ When you accept yourself for who you are and what you have, everything starts to fall into place. Most people don’t accept themselves, which causes inner pain and turmoil, and hinders them from connecting with what they care about most. We spend a lot of time focusing on what we don’t have, rather than what we do. We try to fix our ‘faults’, rather than accept who we are and grow ourselves from there. It’s hard to change a habit when behind it you are at war with yourself, trying to use willpower to ‘force’ yourself to ‘be a better person’.

In school we’re taught that we mustn’t fail — in fact, failing is the worst outcome there is. If we fail a test, it effectively implies that we, ourselves, are a failure. This is completely untrue, but unfortunately the school system’s understanding of failure raises people who hate themselves more and accept themselves less. Not only that, but the social pressure of school forces us to be something we’re not. If we’re not ‘cool’, we’re not good enough, so we have to change to be accepted, driving the wedge even deeper. That’s why, as soon as you come across this understanding of how we’re brought up, it’s essential to re-train your thinking so you can accept who you are today. Once you do, you’ll find growing yourself from there much easier and more enjoyable. And with that, you’ll awaken to your purpose. Finding purpose is a journey. And they say that to uncover the reason we’re here, we need to love ourselves fully first.

So how can you accept yourself?

Early on I learned that there was nothing I could do about my poor eyesight. And there was nothing I could do about my heart condition. I was forced by circumstances to accept both — that was all I could do. Accept it, and learn to live with it. With this acceptance I quickly turned my focus to finding out what I could do, rather than dwelling on what I couldn’t. Accepting the circumstances, accepting myself and choosing to take action on what was in my power to do, has fuelled my journey ever since.

Realise that it’s time to love and nurture the great things about you. The things you haven’t perfected are always a work in progress. That’s the way of the world. Those who succeed are the ones who accept themselves for who they are — and who don’t give a shit about the rest!

Purpose isn’t something you can teach; it’s not something you can come up with because you’ve been told it’s a good idea to have. It needs to come from inside, from the heart. I found my purpose when I went through a lot of trauma and realised the power of bringing people together through sport and activity. It’s what made me love my internship in Hawaii so much, and it’s what makes me love the business I’m in so much.

At OTG, our purpose is to bring people together through custom apparel because we believe custom apparel provides a sense of community and a common set of beliefs and values. We further our purpose through our social impact projects where we give to communities in need through our grants. Charities and social groups apply for either money or apparel needs, and we choose who aligns best with our quarterly focus points and give them the funding and/or apparel. It’s one of the most blissful things, seeing your company and your people do great work for other great people.

The goal in life is to find the collision of what you love, what you’re great at, what the world needs and what you can be paid for. That’s the sweet spot.

Love what you do

Building a business is tough. Building a great career is tough. Becoming a well-known artist is tough. There are moments of glory, but usually they are few and far between. In the early days of OTG I often wondered if all the hard work was worth it … and I always came back to something Steve Jobs once said. Every morning he’d ask himself, ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ Whenever his answer was ‘no’ for several days in a row, he knew he had to change something.

For me the answer has remained a resounding ‘yes’. If today were the last day of my life, I would want to be doing exactly what I’m doing now. I believe in it wholeheartedly.

If you can operate at the intersection of what you love doing and what you can do, and you’re making an impact, then you have a great life ahead. And remember that it’s a constantly evolving journey. It will likely change over the years, over the decades. All the best people I know in career and business are never settled — they love the journey of evolving what they love.

Believe in yourself

Know that you can accomplish things you previously thought were out of reach. You are smart enough. Resourceful enough. Committed. When I began OTG I knew nothing about the clothing and manufacturing process, but if I had been paralysed into thinking I couldn’t do it, I would never have taken that first big order.

With acceptance for yourself flows a strong belief in your own abilities. Not a belief that things will work out the first time (they hardly ever do). Rather, a belief that when they don’t work out, you’ll figure out why, learn from it and try again. Believing in yourself is putting your faith in your ability to persist. To pick up the phone, and make the call. To apply for that job you really want even though you’re not sure you have all the experience or skills they’re looking for. To believe in yourself that you will get yourself in the zone, and nail the interview. And that if they call you back on Tuesday to say you didn’t get the job, you believe in yourself still and set your sights on the next application and interview. Maybe you study that extra skill online, or get a short internship to build up experience. Believing in yourself is the foundation you have within yourself that no matter what, you have what it takes to make it happen.

When we don’t have that strong belief in ourselves, it’s often because we’re too comfortable. You need to push yourself so you have the opportunity to surprise yourself with what you manage to do. Diving in the deep end builds your belief in yourself. Playing it safe keeps you wondering if you’re actually capable. Put yourself into situations you aren’t used to; do things you haven’t done before. Nothing builds confidence more quickly than completing tasks and projects that are foreign or difficult. And that new-found confidence will transfer into other areas of your life. Remember that you once had to learn the things you find easy today, and things that are hard today will be easy in the future.

In an interview for a PBS documentary called One Last Thing, Steve Jobs said something that I found life-changing. He said that we’re brought up to believe that the world is what it is and that we should simply fit into it. He called this ‘a very limited life’. He said we should challenge this notion because ‘everything around you that you call life, was made up by people that were no smarter than you’ and that we should embrace life, change it, improve it and make our mark in this world. He concluded by saying, ‘Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again’.

Trust that the dots will connect

Life is an interesting mix of planning and unpredictability. John Lennon once said, ‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans’. Your plan might happen, or it might partly happen, or it could be totally sideswiped by another opportunity or by an event outside of your control. I’ve been sideswiped by my heart condition, by being let down in a big way by someone I hired, by fraud. But through it all I’ve kept my purpose and my vision constantly aligned and dialled. I’ve had enough things fall into place for me unexpectedly, too, to know and trust that all I need to do is keep going, and the dots will connect. The harder you work and the more passion you execute on, the closer you’ll come to the right opportunities.

When I did my first capital raise, a few of the investors were really, really keen to invest in OTG. Raising capital is a fulltime job in itself, and I was working hard at it while still being CEO of OTG, which was at the time in intense start-up mode. It was so tough. I did a heap of preparation, nailed my pitch to the investors, answered all of their questions, and still they kept asking more and more questions. For weeks and weeks they were dragging me along, but I persisted. They were really keen to invest, and I was determined to close my first round of financing for the company.

On a 6 am flight to Sydney to spend the day meeting with the potential investors to get them, finally (and hopefully), to say ‘yes, let’s go ahead’, I was pumped and exhausted. The woman in the seat next to me was a lovely lady called Juli who I chatted with before getting my laptop out to work. She saw the designs of apparel on my screen and was interested to know more about what I was doing. I enthusiastically shared everything: what we were doing, how exciting the growth was, how awesome the technology we were developing was. She was very impressed and asked for my card. ‘Let’s keep in touch.’

The meetings that day turned out to be a complete disappointment, with the investors still dragging on. I was near ready to give up. Raising capital, I’d discovered, is the hardest thing there is to do. It can be completely demoralising. You spend so much energy getting someone really pumped up, answering their 1000-plus expert questions, and then they turn around and say something like, ‘We think you’re a really great guy, but OTG just doesn’t fit our current investment criteria’. Or, ‘Thanks so much, Mick. We really love your enthusiasm, but we’re just not sure that OTG will be successful like you think it will. Best of luck’. Or, ‘Hi Mick, thanks a lot for meeting us today. We really enjoyed meeting you and learning about your company. We’ll get back to you when we decide if we want to invest’, to then wait weeks and weeks and hear nothing. I was feeling down.

A week later, I received an email from the lady I had met on my flight to Sydney. It read:

‘Hey Mick, it’s Juli. It was lovely to meet you on the aeroplane last week. If you’re ever in need of capital, let me know. I’ve done some successful investments over time, and I’m a career doctor. I would be happy to invest in your business if you’d allow me.’

She didn’t even know I was looking for capital! I couldn’t believe it. I caught up with her for coffee, and she wrote us our first investment cheque the very next week. She has since grown her equity stake in OTG, and with the growth we’ve had she has made 10 times her investment, with her original stake now worth well over $1 million.

You never know what conversation, what meeting, which person, is going to help you dramatically. You never know who you will meet who will impact your journey. You never know if someone you helped out might make a difference later on. Trust that the dots will connect. Trust it’ll all piece together. Yes, you’re going to have a curvy journey getting there. But somehow, it will all fall into place.