As we approach the end of the first month of the year, I want to keep up on my promise to continue sharing my journey. I think a good foundation for my continued sharing is an understanding of why I'm doing what I'm doing. Why JourneyLIFE? What is JourneyLIFE?
To really understand the story behind JourneyLIFE, we have to back all the way up to 2006. My dad, Greg, was working in Goldman Sachs' Ayco wealth management division. He was professionally accomplished but personally unfulfilled. His search for fulfillment led him to take the time to reflect and write a one-sentence purpose statement: "My purpose is to help others define and pursue their purpose." Recognizing the pursuit of his purpose would increase his fulfillment, he told his boss that he'd like to modify his role. The answer was no, and my dad left Goldman to start his own wealth management firm, integrating purpose into the client experience. He also helped friends and family write life purpose statements when they felt unfulfilled.
Now we get to fast forward to 2015, when I was selecting and applying to schools. This was when I wrote the first draft of my purpose statement, now "to foster an entrepreneurial society." I used this to search for schools at which I could plug into a burgeoning startup scene with a good engineering program. This eventually led to accept an offer of admission from Vanderbilt. I was also awarded a full-tuition scholarship based on the essay I wrote about living out my purpose. Knowing that my eloquence was not helping my case (I've re-read that essay; it's not great), I figured that this purpose concept must have something to it.
In 2017, we started the first iteration of JourneyLIFE, a company to help students make the post-high school decision with purpose at the forefront. With limited traction, we decided that the path we were on wasn't the right one for either of us and paused. I spent much of 2018 interning for a large consulting company. I was close to heading there after graduation until I realized that I'm an entrepreneur at heart, and I needed to be in a startup environment. It was around this time that we started to get renewed interest in JourneyLIFE, this time from business leaders looking to help their employees find fulfillment at work.
Over the past 15 years, there has been a shift in the way young professionals think about work. For the first time, a large portion of the working populace is seeking to find fulfillment in their work, not just a 401(k). After seeing their parents killing themselves to keep up with the Joneses, Millennials as a generation are a backswing of materialism. Searching for meaning at work instead of money, Millennials are looking to change the paradigm of a job as an unpleasant reality of life. Gallup sums up this change in expectation well in one graphic:
Even with an understanding of this shift, most companies struggle to provide encourage and support fulfillment at work. They spew values and mission statements in hopes they permeate the culture, but often struggle to find adoption among the majority of their workforce. JourneyLIFE exists to help bridge the gap. Our process for helping defining and pursuing purpose has been refined for 10+ years.
In the context of Gallup's Change in Leadership graphic, our process addresses every aspect of this shift. We help individuals define a life purpose statement, understand their strengths, design an individual development plan, and understand how their purpose translates to their personal life. We equip managers and leadership with the tools to have Growth Conversations throughout the org chart, turning managers into coaches.
Left unaddressed, the lack of fulfillment in the workplace will continue to lead to greater turnover, lower engagement, and underperforming organizations. Six in ten Millennials are actively seeking new roles, and only 29% report feeling engaged at work. The cost of that lack of engagement is estimated to be between $300-500 billion. This is a crisis in the American economy and society. What happens when Millennials make up the majority of corporate executives and 60% are consistently seeking new roles and the cost of their un-engagement skyrockets? (stats from Gallup’s How Millennials Want to Work and Live)
In one sentence, our mission as an organization is to empower everyone to find fulfillment, and we're starting in the workplace.
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