When was the last time you lost yourself? Time dissolved, and you tapped into an energy more powerful than the daily Starbucks caffeine hit. You felt in the zone and connected. You not only didn’t want it to end, it seemed impossible to stop. If it’s been ages, that’s okay, too. What matters is you have it, and it never goes away. Even if it’s been years or you felt it yesterday, this energy is fundamental for your leap.

Lighting your life on fire applies to every leap in your life; it’s rooted in living your purpose and allowing your passions to shine. When this happens, you’re likely to enter a flow state, a blissful state of optimized performance. But simply beyond achieving double the results in half the time, these states are deeply fulfilling, both in business and life.

But before you’re able to harness the true power of these states, you’re going to have to get clear on your purpose, passion, interests, and skills (see Figure 7.1). Using these ingredients, you’ll be able to move forward powerfully with your leap like never before.

Step 1: Create Clarity Around Your Purpose

We sat there in a poorly lit, and way-too-cold Houston conference room and were told we had to identify our life purpose. We had exactly 90 minutes. The timer started.

Shit, I thought. I felt tremendous pressure wash over me. I wrote, rewrote, and erased several sentences. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I felt lost. Nothing I wrote stuck, and it all seemed like what I should be writing. I didn’t know if I was writing my life purpose or entering a submission for Hallmark. When I looked around the room, I exhaled. It seemed everyone was having the same experience.

Here’s why: if you and I are supposed to identify our life purpose, we better get it right. And that level of pressure is exactly the wrong way to think about it.

Step 2: Identify What Lights You Up Inside

Right now, there are things you do that light you up inside. All this means is you lose yourself in them, no one has to remind you to do them and you love spending your most valuable and finite resources on them: your money/time.

The second key ingredient for your leap is to identify what lights you up, or what most people refer to as passion. Again, the common literature around this topic leaves most people wondering how the hell they’re going to find their passion. The idea of having to go out and discover something when you’re already overwhelmed means nothing happens.

And then you feel worse.

Often, I’ll hear a variation of: “Tommy, I’m not sure what I’m passionate about.” To that, I say bullshit. We all already have things we’re passionate about and we don’t need to hit the mountains of Peru and sit Indian style in a medicine wheel sipping on tea to figure them out.

So, how do we clearly identify our passions? How do we know something can be incorporated into a business and monetized, or remain a hobby? How can you strategically spend enough time in something to obtain the valuable knowing it’s for you—or not for you? Why is the pursuit of mastery of a skill your competitive advantage in an Instagram famous world?

These are all great questions we’re going to explore following a simple process designed to get you undeniably clear.

Step 3: Take Inventory of Your Key Skills

Although passion is sexy and will sell out motivational seminars, they mean little unless paired with skill acquisition. We’re led to believe that if we’re enthusiastic enough, people will automatically want to be involved with our work. Although this may be true at times, it’s not a powerful foundation for long-term success.

These days, passion is normal. When I opened the doors to my original fitness facility, I believed I’d bring more energy and passion than anyone else. I was right. You could find me at the facility at 4:07 a.m. cranking music, high-fiving people and being that way, too—annoyingly positive guy who you can’t stand up before I’ve had my morning brew.

(I’m still him, and my fiancée would agree.)

And yet, what I learned the hard way was passion wasn’t enough. If you build it, they won’t always come. I had to develop a set of skills to differentiate myself in the marketplace and become proficient at reaching the people I wanted to serve. I could be the best in the world, but if no one knew about me I’d always be struggling.

With this insight, I focused on the skill of copywriting, crafting an influential and persuasive message to connect with people. Make no mistake—handwriting 4,000-word sales letters to start one’s day is no fun. But as time passed, I realized the combination of passion for one’s work and skill acquisition is what makes us lethal in any marketplace. Often, this combo is undervalued.

In 2012, professor, academic, and writer, Cal Newport, published So Good They Can’t Ignore You. Borrowing a line from comedian Steve Martin about where to place one’s focus in one’s craft, the book is an argument against fully following one’s passion. Although I agree with most of the premise, I find the truth to be in the middle: passion is important but combining it with essential skills is the gamechanger.

So, what are your core skills? You may be an amazing listener and you’re the one people lean on in crisis. You may be able to take complex financial jargon and make it digestible to someone like me. You may understand influence and its place in social media.

Identify your core skills and then place them into the following categories:

• Beginner. You’ve developed some skill, but recognize you are still in the beginner phase. (Usually 20–200 hours.)
• Intermediate. You’ve spent time refining a skill and have received feedback on your proficiency. You’re above average in it. (Usually 200–1,000 hours.)
• Professional. You’re at an elite level. Here is where people throw opportunities your way because of your level of skill. (Usually 1,000–10,000 hours.)
• Mastery. You’re in rarified air and are considered world class. This is a rare spot and takes decades of focused work to accomplish. (Usually 10,000–30,000 hours.)

These categories can be subjective. But there’s enough distinction among them to drop your skills into the appropriate category for now. Later in the chapter, you’ll find out how to evaluate your current skills, and create a game plan in line with your purpose, passions, and your leap.

Step 4: Examine the Marketplace and Their Needs

There comes an elegant intersection between your core purpose—what lights you up and your current inventory of skills—where they’re blended to provide value to others.

At the end of the day, all we can do to increase our value on the world is help others solve problems. Whether that problem is finding a place to crash, hailing a ride from a (hopefully trustworthy) stranger, getting unstuck in business, or finally losing the last 15 pounds, there’s no problem too small or insignificant.

Using the following question, you’re going to start to fill in the blanks by doing a marketplace brain dump. This is about letting your imagination run wild with options. Don’t judge them, and don’t put any pressure on why something may or may not work. No idea is off the table, because working through options will increase your creativity.

You do this by asking a simple question: Given everything I’ve just uncovered, what problems are currently in the marketplace that I could provide solution(s) for?

There are all types of people with all types of problems you could be the one helping them find a solution. To get the ideas flowing, you’ll need to identify at least 20 solutions. Surely, you’ll discard most, but there are going to be two or three from this list that connect with you.

They strike a chord for several reasons: you spot an opportunity, it feels right to you, and it blends all the things you already love while being connected to the purpose statement.

With this in hand, it’s time to clarify it down into one concise statement to ensure you’re clear and so are the people you’re looking to serve.

Step 5: Construct Your One-Liner

What do you do?

“I, uh . . . I do real estate.”

My client was playing small; he provided people with an experience unlike any other when purchasing a home. But here he was falling into a common trap: minimizing himself and missing countless opportunities.

When most people are faced with this question, they either play small or lack clarity. The truth is, if you’re lacking clarity, then the marketplace will, too. Sometimes, we’re unwilling to have clarity due to telling others who we really are. Often, we’re afraid to declare what is most important to us for fear of not being good enough. As a writer, it can be daunting to declare I am one. Why? Because now I’m on the hook. I’ve put myself out there and declared to the world what I am, and I have to live it every single day.

One of the most powerful exercises I’ve done for my businesses and my clients comes from Donald Miller of Story Brand.² His exercise, called the One-liner, is what it sounds like: distilling what we do into a concise, clear, and compelling sentence or two.

Miller developed the one-liner from the Hollywood world, where a screenplay is approved or rejected based on a few sentences. If it was compelling enough, it’d make the next stage. What he realized was all effective one-liners were broken down into three distinct parts. These included:

• The problem you’re solving. This is where it all starts, and how you can connect with people immediately. Why? Because often, we’re all in our own worlds, focusing on our problems and what we need solutions for. The moment you can declare what’s going on in someone else’s life as well as they can, you have connection.
• For example:
• “Travel is incredibly stressful.”
• “Learning guitar can take triple the time it should if you don’t do it right.”
• “Moving cross-country can be the most chaotic experience of your life.”
• “Most entrepreneurs have no problem creating a bold vision; it’s what happens after.”

Simple, concise, and to the point, the problem is designed to hook the right person into learning more. Emphasis on the word right: if they have the problem you’re declaring.

The process you use to solve the problem. Once the problem has been stated, it’s time to transition into the unique process you use to create the solution to the problem. Using the preceding examples, we continue:

• “Using our patented process and relationships with top airlines and airports . . .”
• “Our system has been proven on thousands of frustrated guitar students all over the world . . .”
• “Our done-for-you, nationwide service eliminates guesswork and helps you focus on what matters.”
• “Through comprehensive coaching, consulting, and content . . .”

The payoff, or solution. Last, we finish with the payoff, solution, and/or benefit the person is bound to experience by solving this problem. This is the resolution and the clear after. For our preceding examples, these are:

• “Allowing you to skip the lines and arrive at your destination with peace of mind.”
• “Give you all the tools you need to become a great guitar player in half the time.”
• “You’ll have the smoothest move of your life.”
• “Helping you reverse engineer your success in half the time.”

Simple, right? I’ve been taught this exercise countless times and have performed it on my clients. This is a simple rundown, and if you want to learn more, make sure to visit Donald Miller’s work in the Resources section.

No matter where you find yourself today, clarity is a process, never a destination. That means refining and re-imagining your one-liner must be done at least once a quarter as both you and your business grow and expand. Even if you’re currently working for someone else, go through this process and come up with the one-liner you’d like to have.

This instantly creates a shift in your mind and compels you to make more powerful decisions and business leaps to make your one-liner real.

Mastery Creates Meaning

Meaning is what we all want to feel in our lives and work. We want to feel we’re valued and making someone else’s life better. Part of mastery, as introduced earlier, is the acquisition of skills to help you become valuable. Through the process of identifying, practicing, refining, and integrating these skills, you improve. In a noisy digital world where most seek shallow, right-on-time skills, you separate yourself from the pack and start to fall in love with your craft.

Part of this equation is creating a skill focus and refinement plan for your success, which we’ll tackle now.

Your Skill Game Plan

I’m throwing a ton at you, for good reason: this is the gold that will ensure your leap is a success; it’s a system to get you on a path of expertise and mastery others will willingly pay for. Let’s take what we’ve discussed earlier and break it down in an actionable, practical path for you to start using today.

Putting It All Together

At this point, we demystified the conventional wisdom of purpose and passion. You should be feeling clear, confident, and ready. We’ve also identified what you’re uniquely better than most at, and how to showcase this value to the world. Remember: although this conversation usually only occurs in the context of business, knowing this is crucial to any of your leaps.

Armed with this knowledge and focus, it’s time to craft the vision for your leap and never look back.