Why finding your purpose is a gift for everyone else

I first met Sammy Garrity, The Brand Catalyst in a mastermind group, called Business is Personal run by Penny Power OBE . I was immediately struck by what a phenomenal leader she was, experiencing many highs, but equally adept at navigating adversity.

She has built nine of her own businesses since 2002, supported over 70,000 entrepreneurs to launch and now leads The Impact Catalysts with her husband Greg Garrity, supporting entrepreneurs, leaders, and CEOs to courageously, consistently, and collectively achieve their impact goals.

Sammy is a multi-award-winning international speaker, 10-times best-selling author, creator of 1000+ courses, resources & programs and has just published her latest book, One Year No Fear (available at www.OneYearNoFearBook.com )

Our conversation offers inspiration to any leader struggling to balance life and work, to identify their true purpose and think more than act.

Sammy’s path to starting her first business…

Sammy worked for several leading marketing agencies in the lead up to the turn of the millennium. As it transpired, the first company went bust when the owner ran into financial challenges. Then the second company she was working for in December 2001, whilst appearing outwardly successful, were what Sammy came to know as overtrading – spending more than they were bringing in. She was made redundant that Christmas, when finally, their financial overspending caught up with them.

Things seemed to work out for the best when she was headhunted by another sizeable agency in the new year. She loved her job, built a team of six designers under her in the advertising and marketing department, and thought life was going great. Yet by the end of 2001, she sensed things were not right in the business. On 5th December 2002 she and 51 colleagues were marched into the boardroom to be told the doors were closing: the company had run out of money.

Sammy admits that redundancy for a third successive Christmas shattered her confidence. Rather than applying to other design agencies she decided to temp for a while. She was working as a personal assistant at the Environment Agency when a woman around the same age as Sammy pushed past her at the photocopier one day, threw Sammy’s paperwork to one side and started doing her own copying. “I remember standing there thinking, ‘who do you think you are to treat me as if I have no value? I’m more qualified than you, yet because of my situation I’ve ended up here working beneath you.’

Such an aggressive action proved to be the wake-up call that Sammy needed. She thought, ‘What the heck am I doing?! Why am I here wasting my purpose away like this?’ It took that wake-up moment to remind Sammy of her values, value, and priorities.

Taking a leap of faith

After her recent experiences, Sammy realised the only way to move forward was to set up her own business. She phoned her dad that night to tell him what she was thinking of doing: “He said, ‘At last! I’ve been telling you to do that for years!’ It was just the boost Sammy needed”.

As if she needed any further support, she got it from her friend Tim: “I visited him after speaking to my dad and told him about my plan. He said, ‘Brilliant, when you set up your company I’ll come and work for you. We’re going to be an incredible team!’”

Such belief from others did not stop her fear of failure. Sammy had seen large companies go under. Why would she be any different? Nonetheless, she set up her first business. “All I knew was I had something bigger inside me that I was ready to explore.”

Managing the fear, finding purpose…

Like so many leaders I speak to, Sammy suffered terrible impostor syndrome. However, she overcame those fears by getting in touch with her purpose. She was so inspired and took massive action. But how did she find that purpose?

When setting up her first business she attended a Business Link training course on accounting. She admits she knew nothing about running a business, so while she had little interest in accounting, she felt obligated to learn more. As it turned out, the session provided little learning about accounts, but it did provide a revelation.?

Sammy recalls: “I was sitting at the back of the room, trying not to be seen. As the trainer walked onto the stage, he put a slide up that stopped me in my tracks. It said:

“Individually, we are one drop.

Together, we are an ocean.”

She spent the rest of the workshop pondering over what it means to be one drop, how that creates a ripple effect and how every person in that room was a one drop. She started considering how her business could create a ripple effect for others and how individually we can all make a small difference, but together our ripple of impact could create greater waves of change in a more significant way. Here was her purpose, strong enough to drown out the voice that stalked her about failure.

The body says enough.

By 2013, Sammy had already built an incredible career as a highly successful entrepreneur. She and her clients were thriving, profits growing exponentially. But personally, she was struggling. Work pressures had disconnected her from her family, and then over three and a half months, she was taken to hospital four times with serious chest pains. The fourth visit proved a pivotal turning point.

?“The consultant said to me, ‘Miss Blindell (my surname at the time), the next time I see you in this room I cannot guarantee the damage you are doing to your body will be reversible. You have to change what you’re doing.’”

He had one further, very powerful statement to make having caught Sammy looking at her watch: “You know, you’re free to make your own choices but you’re not free of the consequences of those choices. You really have to change what you are doing.” That was Sammy’s moment to say, ‘I’m done’. She gave up her ￡7.8m business and walked away.

Consequently, the universe made her tap into her true self, ‘a nurturer, a mama bear, a creative community creator.’ Suddenly, she realised she had not been following her true purpose after all.

Listening to your true purpose…

Sammy’s health problems led to a period of reflection. “When I set up my first business, I was driven by a mission to be in control of my money. In 2002, after being broke at Christmas three years in a row, I made a vow to myself never to be in a position where I could not contribute at Christmas ever again.”

While clearly a laudable vision, Sammy worked hard to drive profitability in her businesses. With her head down, she forgot about the ‘One Drop’ and the ‘ripple effect’… the things that had really ignited her passion from the outset.

Instead, she spent thousands on the best coaches to help drive her business. Looking back, Sammy recognises she invested in herself from the wrong energy. Profit became her purpose. “I had everything I could want materially, but lacked love, family, and time with those people. I think this was a result of lacking a good model of someone successfully balancing a relationship and a business.”

But time and distance started to heal her, and the ripple effect was about to return with a bang.

How ‘One Drop’ and Ripple Makers appeared as Sammy’s true purpose…

In 2018, having returned successfully to the business world (albeit in a more balanced way), Sammy found herself in California. She was invited to participate in an intense documentary which took one hundred global changemakers; all achieving incredible social impact around the world, and put them under extreme physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and financial pressure to test how high achieving leaders respond under pressure. It was physically and emotionally draining, but also validating and empowering.

At the end of filming, Sammy’s friend Lynn, who lives in LA, offered her a lift to the airport, but suggested a trip to the shops first, given the rush-hour traffic. “We were in this beautiful little place called Seaport Village in San Diego. All wood cabins and twinkly lights overlooking the ocean. We went into a crystal shop, and I searched for gifts for my daughters. As I turned round to pay, there was a pendant hanging there: a One Drop!” She nudged her friend and exclaimed: “Look – it’s a One Drop!” Lynn had no idea what she was talking about. Sammy explained the whole ‘ripple effect’ philosophy and how she had built her businesses on the One Drop collaboration concept.

“Lynn made me a buy the pendant on the spot! I started to wear it and people would ask what it was wherever I went. I’d tell them about One Drop and how important it is for us all to play our part as Ripple Makers, to which many replied, ‘how do I get involved and how do I get one of those One Drops?’ When I said I didn’t know, people told me I had to get it started.”

The result of sharing her One Drop story all around the world was that she collected over 500 names over the next few years.

By 2019 the first 1000 One Drop Unity pendants were ready to ship!

One Drop means being always a generous champion of others, making ripples in the lives of other people and creating positive waves of change in every community you touch.

The One Drop Movement was born officially during lockdown, going on to grow a global ‘Ripple Makers’ community over the next few years. She then launched the Ripple Makers Mastermind, which meant that Sammy could now also support the entrepreneurs in her community by masterminding with them to discover what their business ripple of impact is, before helping them every day to build a purpose driven brand around it.

One Year No Fear…

To support her members, Sammy created over 1000 online courses, resources, programs, and tools to train them how to confidently build a profitable impact business that attracts the right clients. But through lockdown, she and her husband Greg became increasingly frustrated when clients weren’t implementing or leveraging the proven strategies they were being taught. Those who followed Sammy’s proven business growth process achieved great impact and financial success, while others talked the talk and didn’t walk the walk. Sammy and Greg wanted to know why.

So, they surveyed over 41,000 entrepreneurs to get under the skin of what was keeping these high-quality business owners in a holding pattern of low-quality results.

The survey revealed 12 fears that have the most debilitating influence on confidence, resilience, and performance.

Fears that block success.

They saw this as a personal challenge and committed to write a series of thirteen books; the first, One Year No Fear, dives into each fear so that the reader can discover what is holding them back. Then the following twelve books, launching one per month starting December 2023, dive deeper into each of the fears, giving a 30-day challenge with each book to bust through that fear.

The purpose of this series is to take each reader closer with every step to becoming the most CREDIBLE, CONFIDENT and TRUSTED impact maker in their industry as they build their purpose driven business.

Final Words

Sammy had some powerful advice for her final words: “Stop thinking about yourself, what you look like, and how you sound. Stop focusing on ‘perfect’ because perfection is poverty that not only keeps you poor, but it also keeps everyone else whose life you could be touching poor too.”

What Sammy means by this is if you wait for perfection, you will deprive so many others of the gifts you have inside you. “Don’t waste twenty years searching for your purpose or hearing your calling and not listening to it. I wasted so many years because of that.” Sammy regrets it took eighteen years for that epiphany in the crystal store. “We’re on a big mission. My Mum makes the pendants in her glass fusing workshop in France, and we’re shipping them out to as many people as we can!”

One last piece of advice: you must verbalise your purpose. Share it with those who really ‘get you’, ask them to brainstorm it with you, shape it and follow your vision consistently, persistently, and purposefully.”

Sammy has emphatically put her purpose into action, even if it took longer than she would have liked. What we can all take away from this is to remember that the universe rewards action, not thinking.

?Connect with Sammy on LinkedIn and do check out her website here.

#findyourpurpose #lessonsinleadership #leadership

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