42: Ezra Firestone: Serve the World Unselfishly and Profit

Ezra Firestone is a blogger, podcast, e-commerce expert, speaker and founder of smartmarketer.com Ezra grew up on a hippie commune on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii which gives Ezra a unique way of looking at the world, business and relationships.

Favorite Success Quotes

“Serve the world unselfishly and profit.” – Ezra Firestone

Key Points

1. You Need to Focus on Service 

If you want to be great at business, then you need to shift your paradigm around business and success to focus on service.

How can you serve the world?

What does the world need that you can provide?

How can you create value for other people and serve them unselfishly.

Whenever we are too focused on money, we begin to lose sight of one simple truth.

All sustainable success comes from serving the world and providing true value to those around you.

Money is important, yes.

But to earn money, you must first serve.

2. You Can Only Give From Your Own Surplus

Unfortunately, we live in a society that will demonize money and wealthy individuals.

We complain about other people’s success and financial abundance without ever realizing that having an excess of wealth is the best way to serve the world.

The simple fact is this: You can only give from your own surplus.

It’s just like the analogy of the crashing airplane.

You are always told to put the mask on yourself first before you help your friends or even your children.

Why?

Because if the airplane is going down and you black out, you can’t help anyone. 

And the same concept holds true with financial success.

If you are not taking care of yourself, if you are not able to pay your bills on time and in full, and if you are not living in abundance, then how in the world can you expect to help others?

When you are drowning in bills, watching your savings dwindle, and wondering whether or not you are going to be able to eat tomorrow, it’s pretty difficult to focus on any body else’s well being and financial security.

But when you come from a place of abundance, when your own cup is filled, you are able to use the surplus and excess fruits of your labor to serve others.

When you are taken care of, you have the ability and the desire to help others.

So stop demonizing success and money and start earning it!

Because only then can you leverage it for the good of others.

3. Where Attention Goes Energy Flows 

Where your attention goes, energy will flow.

If you are putting all of your attention on a problem that you are facing and how much your life sucks instead of finding a solution, then you will exacerbate the problem and create more stress and anxiety then before.

Conversely, if you are putting all of your energy into the different solutions and tactics you can implement to create freedom and impact in your life, then you will start to find new and exciting ways to generate income and free yourself from the trap of trading time for dollars.

Be conscious about where your are focusing your attention.

Because when you focus your attention on anything, whether a problem or a solution, it grows and compounds.

4. Be Willing to Cut Your Losses

While it is important to have the tenacity to power through tough times and trying situations, it is also important to understand when to cut your losses and move on with your life.

Sometimes, things aren’t worth saving.

This can be a challenge for many of you, especially entrepreneurs.

It is easy to get so caught up in a project or business that we don’t even realize it was doomed from the start.

When you invest time and money into something, it is only natural that you want it to succeed.

But it is imperative that you look at your successes and failures objectively and as the old poker saying goes “Know when to hold ’em, and know when to fold ’em”

5. The Only Skill You Need is the Willpower to Practice Consistency 

If you want to succeed, there is only one skill that you need to master.

Consistency.

If you can just show up each and every day and attack your projects and your business plan with an almost mundane consistency, you will achieve success.

By just showing up each and every day and doing something that moves the ball closer to the goal line, you will eventually score a touch down and achieve your goals.

But if you approach projects with too much inconsistent intensity, working 80 hours a week, getting burnt out, and then collapsing, you will never be able to stack enough bricks to build your home.

We get ahead little by little, not necessarily in fast spurts.

Charlie Munger said it best:

Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Discharge your duties faithfully and well. Step by step you get ahead, but not necessarily in fast spurts. But you build discipline by preparing for fast spurts…. Slug it out one inch at a time, day by day. At the end of the day–if you live long enough–most people get what they deserve.

Influential Books

 Busting Loose From the Money Game by Robert Scheinfeld

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

The One Thing by Gary Keller

Connect with Ezra

smartmarketer.com

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