A Near Death Experience Changes Perspective on Success

Sometimes major life events, like near death experiences, can help entrepreneurs find some much-needed perspective about what success means to them. That was the case with Rand Leeb-du Toit.

Said Leeb-du Toit, “If you were on your deathbed 18 months from now, and there was no coming back. That’s it. You’re on a one way ticket out of here. And you ask yourself that deep meaningful question at that point, have I done what I wanted to do? Have I done what really meant so much to me in my life? And if you can unequivocally answer, ‘Yes, absolutely,’ then that’s what success is.”

Leeb-du Toit is a coach, speaker, founder of EXOscalr and author of the new book Fierce Reinvention, which is a guide to being fierce in entrepreneurship and finding success as a leader.

I had a chance to speak with Leeb-du Toit recently. During our interview, he shared some tips for entrepreneurs along with his own story of fierce reinvention.

Check out the full interview here …

These are the tips for entrepreneurs Rand shared in our discussion.

A Near Death Experience Changes Your Perspective

Leeb-du Toit explained, “I’m essentially a serial entrepreneur and former venture capitalist and I was working for one of the largest research and advisory companies at one point in 2014 and suffered a sudden cardiac death experience, which was a massive trigger event for me to contemplate what it is that I should be doing with my life. The result of that was one year later I left that company, started EXOscalr with the vision and the quest to help people get onto the right track with their lives. I hesitate to call myself an executive coach, a leadership coach, a guide, a spirit guide. It’s all of the above.”

Stop and Think

It’s easy to get caught up in the daily hustle of business ownership and forget about the bigger picture. When this happens, Leeb-du Toit recommends taking a pause to reset your brain.

He said, “Once you stop for a moment, you stop that hustle, and I’m not saying stop it completely by any means. I’m just staying stop, whether it’s a micro pause or it’s going on a hike for a couple of days or a retreat.”

Harness Fear

Making major changes in life or in business can be scary. So instead of fighting that, use it to energize your journey.

Leeb-du Toit said, “What are you so afraid of stopping and thinking about? What’s going to emerge for you? And that’s the real challenge as well in terms of once you understand that fear doesn’t control you and you’re able to live with it to get in there and manage it and that’s a lot of the process that I work with my clients through is getting to love their fear and harness then turn that into energy.”

Hold Yourself Accountable

From there, you need actual systems for making the changes you want to make. Leeb-du Toit calls this an operating system. Essentially, it’s a roadmap to your major goals.

Leeb-du Toit said, “You build out an operating system, which starts with your very high level of goals of consequence and then starts mapping that down into, right down to on a daily basis what you’re going to be dong over a period of time and you then start mapping out and checking in on yourself. Being accountable to yourself or to your coach or your guide or to a friend, am I on track? If you’re not on track, how can I recalibrate so I do get back on track?”

This article, "A Near Death Experience Changes Perspective on Success" was first published on Small Business Trends