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“Every once in a while a book comes along that stands out in its ability to really help people. If you are one of those people who feels unsatisfied with your work or still haven't figured out what you want to do when you grow up, read this book, do the brilliantly constructed exercises and watch your life transform.”

Cocreator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series and coauthor of The Success Principles

“This isn't a book as much as it is a road map. It takes you on a journey where you'll meet the most interesting character in the universe (Spoiler Alert: It's YOU). But the YOU that embarks upon this journey will not be the same YOU that reaches the horizon…in fact, What Is Your WHAT? will specifically guide you, step-by-step toward something most people never discover…and with this discovery you can, as Steve Jobs suggested, ‘put a dent in the universe.’ This book clearly puts the author, Steve Olsher, in the Who's Who of What's What.”

—Dan Hollings
Marketing Strategist www.danhollings.com (best known for his work with “The Secret,” Zero Cost Marketing Secrets, and Email Clockstar)

“We are told the biggest regret shared by people in the last days of life is that they did not live an authentic life. Busy living out the expectations of others, they tried to be ‘responsible’ and ‘practical,’ but missed the one thing that would have made them great. In this timely book, Steve draws from the examples of people living their WHAT to give each of us a step-by-step process for living authentically. Prepare to become who you were born to be.”

—Dan Miller
New York Times best-selling author of 48 Days to the Work You Love

“In every generation, there are a mere handful of books that truly stand out to people looking to get ahead in life in a positive and uplifting way. Steve Olsher's What Is Your WHAT? is in that elite field and needs to be read (make that devoured!) and applied today.”

“I believe we are all created by God with a unique set of passions, talents, skills, abilities, personality, and presence that make us unique. That means you are the only one that can bring your unique value to the world! In What Is Your WHAT?, Steve Olsher helps you identify and move forward into what you were born to do. That fire burning inside you? It's calling you to impact the world. Do it!”

“I spent years figuring out what I was meant to do and it boiled down to a simple idea of helping others live their Full Potential. Steve has simplified the process and asks important questions that will help you go deeper in less time. If you're like me and tend to be overly analytical, this book will help you overcome perceived obstacles and take action. You don't choose your ‘one thing,’ it chooses you…and similarly, you don't choose this book…it chooses you!”

“Far too many struggle with defining who they are and what they were put here to do. In What Is Your WHAT? Steve Olsher shows you exactly how to tap into your natural wiring so you can monumentally impact not only those who share this lifetime with you, but also those of lifetimes to come.”

—Bill Renkosik (aka Bad Boy Bill)
International DJ and Producer www.badboybill.com

“If you're ready to learn a blueprint for discovering your true talents, skills, and abilities, then read and absorb the strategies in this book by Steve Olsher!”

—James Malinchak
Featured on ABCs Hit TV Show Secret Millionaire; Coauthor, Chicken Soup for the College Soul; Founder, www.BigMoneySpeaker.com

“Following the existential question of ‘Why am I here?’ that each of us strives to understand is the as-important ‘What is my WHAT?’ Avoid starting with the enigmatic ‘Why,’ and rather, seek your ‘WHAT.’ When you discover it, you'll undoubtedly realize deeper meaning, fulfillment, and a sense of purpose unlike anything you've ever known!”

—Mike Muhney
Coinventor of ACT! Contact Management software; CEO and Inventor of VIPorbit Mobile Relationship Management software www.MikeMuhney.com and www.vipOrbit.com

“Some people are just lucky…they immediately know who they are and what they were born to do. For us mere mortals, the process is typically a journey—one of trial and error. Identifying who you are and WHAT you were born to do can be daunting. With Steve Olsher's book, What Is Your WHAT?, you no longer have to go it alone. The answers you need are right here.”

“In What Is Your WHAT? Steve Olsher shows you how to move from being awake to being ALIVE. Seriously…life is short. Read this book, discover what you were born to do, share your gifts with the world, and get paid extraordinarily well for what you would gladly do for free.”

“If you've been frustrated with the direction of your life and there is a part of you that knows you are meant for something bigger, What is Your WHAT? is a must read! Why continue to try and figure things out on your own when Steve can show you the way?!”

—Joe Amoia
The Smarter Dating Guy; Creator of Smarter Dating for Women www.SmarterDatingForWomen.com

“Moving into our own unique focus is not a luxury, living authentically demands that we move onto our own path. Yes we get to fill in the blank! Moving to that which whispers to us, demands our attention and ultimately leverages our best is what we are designed to do and through these remarkable stories and exercises, Steve Olsher provides evidence on authentic living being the best measurement of success.”

“What is Your WHAT? will make a positive difference in your life. If you've ever wondered, ‘Why am I here and how can I turn my joy into my job?’—this book shows you how. Read it and reap.”

“What Is Your WHAT? encourages you to hone in on the one trait every successful entrepreneur I have interviewed on my top-ranked business podcast EntrepreneurOnFire has…FOCUS: Follow One Course Until Success. We all have the ability to be AMAZING at one thing if we put our mind and heart to it. Podcasting is my WHAT. What is yours?”

“Steve Olsher has been helping people discover their WHAT for years. His powerful tools and technologies are only exceeded by his inspirational voice and from-the-heart encouragement and coaching. Steve has inspired me personally, and I know he will inspire you too.”

“Identifying the ONE thing you were born to do and sharing this gift with the world is both your obligation and your birthright. What Is Your WHAT? not only teaches you precisely how to tap into your inherent blueprint but also to understand how you're uniquely wired to excel. I highly recommend reading it.”

—David Riklan
Founder of www.SelfGrowth.com, # 1 Self Improvement Website on the Internet

“Steve has created the ultimate guide on self-discovery and formulates a vortex of personal purpose and practical application. It's apparent that his WHAT was designed to ignite the fire in many souls to serve the world in whatever capacity they choose.”

“You wish you knew how certain people became successful and could apply a process to your own life to get results. This book tells the story of successful people but more importantly teaches you how to duplicate their success by applying principles and strategies. Read it and watch your life change.”

—Andy Traub
Author, The Early To Rise Experience Series www.takepermission.com

“In a world full of fuzziness and confusion, this book is like a tiny grenade of clarity. Sharp, smart, and to the point, it's a perfect way to figure out your WHAT.”

—Jon Acuff
New York Times best-selling author of Start www.JonAcuff.com

“Stop passively going through life and start really living! What is Your WHAT? provides easy-to-implement solutions that will transform your life into one with great meaning and happiness.”

—Elizabeth Lombardo, PhD
Best-selling author of A Happy You: Your Ultimate Prescription for Happiness www.AHappyYou.com

“Steve Olsher has done a stellar job in reminding us of the key to really engaging with our life and work. A direct, engaging, and useful manual for connecting with our own unique signatures, and why that matters.”

—David Allen
International best-selling author, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity www.DavidCo.com

“Most people don't say ‘YES’ to what truly puts fire in their soul. Too often, they're living small and take misguided actions because they have yet to identify their WHAT—the ONE thing they were born to do. Until your WHAT becomes clear, you'll continually be led astray by distractions. Read this book, discover your WHAT, and say YES to life!”

“Most people who ask themselves, ‘What is my purpose in life?’ go blank. Steve's book provides a definitive map to answer that question and most importantly shines a light on the final destination. What Is Your WHAT? takes you on a new journey of self-discovery and, ultimately, leads you to discover what you were born to do.”

—Steven Aitchison
Author of Change Your Thoughts www.stevenaitchison.co.uk/blog

“I'm a rabid fan of self-employment as the greatest vehicle for freedom in today's culture. After years of consulting with hundreds of people trying to go from traditional employment to ‘free agency’ and often running aground, I realized most failed business attempts come as a result of personal issues. Not understanding one's place in the world…the WHAT…is at the epicenter. Steve hooked me in his introduction through his personal story, fervor, and wisdom. This will be a foundational book in my business arsenal for helping my members.”

“Challenging, thought-provoking and insightful—a great exploration into becoming the you who you are meant to be.”

—Randy Gage
Author of the New York Times best seller, Risky Is the New Safe

“Until you retrain the brain and transform your self-view, you'll continue to sabotage. Olsher helps you identify your best self and harness that power to fuel your breakthrough!”

—Lisa Jimenez M Ed
Best-selling author of Conquer Fear! and Radical Transformation! www.Rx-Success.com

“Steve Olsher's concept and method for finding your WHAT is brilliant. We have an obligation to ourselves to pursue our passion and share our unique gifts with the world. This collection of stories from Steve's network of experts is sure to inspire and motivate readers to discover their WHAT and start living the life they were meant to live.”

“What Is Your WHAT? guides you to achieve clarity and focus while empowering you to maximize your life production and quality. Read it and win.”

—Dr. Bob Wright
Coauthor, Beyond Time Management and Business with Purpose

“If you're tired of wandering aimless in the world and have been searching for a solution to help you connect to your passion, What is Your WHAT? is a brilliant masterpiece that will transform your life and empower you to realize your highest potential.”

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To the bold and fearless who pursue their WHAT with strategic abandon and have the courage to massively impact both those who share this lifetime with them and also those of generations to come.

There are many people who've supported me on my journey. My heartfelt thanks goes to the following:

I love and appreciate each of you and could not have written this book without you.

Have you ever wondered why we so dearly love the story of Cinderella, the downtrodden servant who becomes a princess? Or the tale of Luke Skywalker, a humble farm boy who becomes the savior of the galaxy?

If you think deeply about their stories, you'll realize that while they undergo great transformations, they don't change from being one type of person to being an entirely different person.

Instead, they start out with their inherent greatness suppressed by difficult childhoods and buried by harsh circumstances. Over the course of their adventures, however, they learn to shed the shackles of their past and become their true selves—leaders, inspirational figures, and heroes.

The central message of these stories has great resonance for all of us. As we endure life's hardships, we tend to lose touch with our inner greatness. We start to make distasteful compromises, settle for less, and become people different from our deepest selves.

What Is Your WHAT? empowers you to follow the examples of Cinderella and Luke. If you diligently work through this book's exercises, you'll discover your true potential, become who you were born to be, and achieve profound fulfillment and success.

This will benefit not only you, but the lives of everyone you touch. Once you shed your skin and dump your baggage, you'll possess the magic to positively affect an incredible number of people.

Examples of this process go well beyond fairy tales. Consider the journeys of Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., three of the most revered and influential people of the past century.

None was born rich or powerful, but each tapped into a personal blueprint to access natural Gifts; determined the best way, or Vehicle, to make use of those Gifts; figured out who their primary audience was for those Gifts; and then moved Heaven and Earth to share those Gifts with the world.

In other words, they discovered their WHAT, pursued their WHAT with strategic abandon, and persevered until they provided the benefits of their WHAT to those who needed it most.

This is a path that's been followed since the beginning of mankind to achieve dramatic success. It's a model you can, and absolutely should, leverage.

Discovering your WHAT requires taking three steps:

1. Identifying your natural God-given Gifts.

2. Identifying the best Vehicle for sharing your Gifts with the world.

3. Identifying the specific audience who will benefit most from your Gifts.

After you've made these discoveries, you can maintain clear focus by articulating them in a summary that will serve as your life's guiding mantra.

If you have yet to identify your WHAT, don't worry; you will by the time you're done with this book. And in the meantime, you're far from alone.

The tragic truth is most people will reach their deathbeds without taking even one of the three steps to self-fulfillment; they will fail to recognize they were put on this planet to achieve something amazing.

A small number will manage two of the steps. And a very, very small percentage will accomplish all three.

This is in part why so many people are obsessed with celebrities who appear to be “living the dream.” How else can we explain the tremendous popularity of shows about becoming successful in Hollywood, or why some people will spend hours in the rain just to catch a glimpse of a movie or TV star?

We're naturally attracted to those we believe are living their lives to the fullest: people who touch our souls, inspire us to take action, and are living their WHAT.

The good news is there's no privileged secret you must magically uncover in order to join the ranks of those “living the dream.” All you have to do to achieve happiness and prosperity is discover your WHAT, work your tail off, and share your Gifts with the world.

The Wisdom of Curly

There are numerous ways to describe your WHAT. One of my all-time favorites can be found in 1991's City Slickers.

In this movie, Mitch Robbins (played by Billy Crystal) takes a break from his busy Manhattan lifestyle to vacation at a dude ranch in the country in an effort to “find himself” and work his way out of a mid-life funk. During this journey, he meets Curly Washburn (played by Jack Palance), who represents everything Mitch is not: carefree, tough as nails, and—most importantly—centered.

I've seen thousands of movies in my life, but there are only a handful that really hit home. What most stuck in my mind from City Slickers was a scene that immediately seemed oddly profound, but I didn't take in its full meaning until years later.

It involves Curly and Mitch, each riding horseback, conversing about life. If you haven't seen the movie, try to imagine a tough, no-nonsense old cowboy wearing a black cowboy hat, red bandana around his neck, black riding gloves, and a lit cigarette hanging tenuously from the corner of his mouth. His voice sounds like it was passed down from Moses, and he talks with the confidence of a man who's seen and lived it all.

In comparison, Mitch is a small, unassuming city guy who's wearing a New York Mets baseball cap, and a shirt and khakis that might've come from L.L. Bean. The best way to describe the difference between them is this eloquent comment Curly makes to Mitch earlier in the movie: “I crap bigger than you.”

In the scene that had the greatest impact on me, Curly says, “You city folk, you worry about a lot of shit.”

Mitch replies, “Shit?! My wife basically told me she doesn't want me around.”

“Yeah. You all come here at about the same age with the same problems. Spend about 50 weeks a year getting knots in your rope, and then you think two weeks out here will untie them for you. None of you get it. Do you know what the secret of life is?”

Still holding up one finger, Curly says, “One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don't mean shit.”

Curly says, “That's what you've got to figure out….” And then he rides away.

Curly calls it your “One Thing.” I call it your WHAT. It doesn't matter what you call it. You just need to figure out what it is.

Your Two Choices

1. Complete this book in its entirety, identify your WHAT, wear your WHAT on your sleeve, and share your unique Gifts with the world, or

2. Accept that your current vocation is your WHAT, live it as best you can, and quit your complaining.

You may be thinking there's just no way the latter is true. For example, if you work with numbers, you might say to yourself, “Spend the next 50 years with clients running spreadsheets, filing tax returns, or planning retirement portfolios? Absolutely not!”

But if you grew up with a flair for math and solving complex equations resonates to your core, then being an accountant or financial planner could be what you are truly compelled to do.

That said, there have been skilled number crunchers who started as part-time bookkeepers and ended up creating financial sector-related endeavors that earned millions.

You don't have to consciously take the three steps to your WHAT to realize your path. Some lucky people naturally find it right away, while others make subtle adjustments over the course of years until they're where they need to be. Still others make an abrupt 180° turn at some point and start a whole new career.

An example of the latter is Dr. Joe Amoia of Emerson, New Jersey. Joe spent tens of thousands of dollars and more than 15 years of his life becoming a licensed chiropractor, opening his own practice, and developing hundreds of loyal patients. If you'd asked him eight years ago whether he'd be dropping his practice and changing careers, he would've laughed at you.

But, today, Joe is the Smarter Dating Guy—a dating and relationship strategist who coaches single women on how to find love.

Why would a successful doctor willingly walk away from what he'd worked so hard to attain? What empowered him to start over from scratch?

He discovered the one thing he was born to do. And once he identified his WHAT, virtually everything else became trivial.

In contrast, the vast majority of people never find their path…mostly because they refuse to recognize it exists.

Even when clients are interested enough to attend my workshops, there are always some who resist the concept. They ask:

“How is it possible that someone has just one thing she overwhelmingly loves to do?”

“What if I don't have a WHAT?”

“Why should I spend my time figuring out what my WHAT is? My life is just fine.”

It saddens me when people resist discovering who they are and the Gifts they possess. It saddens me even more, however, that some of our world's best minds and most passionate souls have identified their WHAT but are stuck in situations that deprive them of the opportunity to fully achieve their greatness.

If you're reading this from the comfort of an easy chair, a park bench on a beautiful day, or your favorite coffeehouse, count your blessings. Recognize that anything and everything you desire can be yours—because you possess the freedom to pursue your destiny.

Put away all excuses. Be grateful for the opportunities available to you and, most importantly, prepare yourself for a life-altering journey.

A Little About Me

I grew up in Evanston, Illinois, a child of modest beginnings. My parents divorced when I was seven. My brother, sister, and I lived with my mom, who did her best to raise us on a limited income.

I started working at age 10. I took on all kinds of odd jobs—shoveling snow, raking leaves, mowing lawns. If it paid anything, I grabbed it.

In high school I had a 4.0 GPA. I'm not talking Grade Point Average, but Girls Per Attempt. In other words, for every 10 girls I asked out, I averaged four dates.

That actually wasn't bad for a short wannabe player with a frizzy mullet and a gold hoop earring (see Figure I.1). During high school I waited tables, pumped gas, fixed cars, played drums, stocked shelves, worked in restaurants, and even sold speakers out of the back of a van.

Figure I.1 Steve in High School

During my freshman year of college, I began to DJ, and eventually became good enough to spin in the clubs throughout Illinois. This led to my sharing the stage with some of the biggest DJs in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including Bad Boy Bill and Julian Jumpin' Perez.

At age 20, I opened The Funky Pickle! on the main drag in Carbondale, Illinois, just off the campus of Southern Illinois University. The Pickle was a unique concept—a no-alcohol nightclub in the middle of Carbondale's alcohol-suffused nightlife. At first glance, it seemed like a huge mistake, but I had a plan.

I knew the local teenagers had very few options for entertainment. So from 8:00 p.m. to 11:30 p.m., we catered to those under the age of 18. At 11:30 p.m. we closed, cleaned the place up, reopened at midnight and catered to those 18 and over…often until 6:00 a.m.

By city ordinance, bars that served alcohol had to close at 1:30 a.m. Given that we didn't have a liquor license, we could stay open all night long—and we had plenty of customers who appreciated that. Ultimately I had a falling out with my business partner, but with this first success, my entrepreneurial fire was fully ablaze.

I've since gone on to build multiple million-dollar businesses in various fields, including Liquor by Wire (starting as a catalog company, then launching on CompuServe's Electronic Mall in 1993, and becoming one of the first ecommerce websites in 1995); Liquor.com (as cofounder and chairman); and Bold Development (a real estate development company that focuses on adaptive reuse) and I have applied creative approaches to each endeavor.

Not all of my ventures have proven fruitful and I've experienced monumental ups and downs. I've gone through financial ruin, divorce, and battles with depression. But I've also fallen back in love, been blessed with three wonderful children, and built very successful companies.

I've been married to my wife Lena since 1997 and have three incredible sons. Nothing teaches you more about life than love. Love requires patience, kindness, and selflessness—traits that don't always come naturally to me. I work at it every day. And while I often make mistakes, the look of disappointment in the eyes of someone I love always brings me back to center.

Since August 2000, I've trained in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu under one of its true grandmasters—Carlson Gracie Jr.—and the late Carlson Gracie Sr.

Carlson Gracie Jr. is a legend in the sport, having won 10 Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu championships, and is a member of the family that put Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu on the international map. If you're unfamiliar with Jiu-Jitsu, it's a ground-fighting technique in which the objective is to force your opponent to surrender. This subtle persuasion takes place as a result of chokes or limb manipulation (think broken arms, legs, ankles, elbows, etc.). Being choked to the point of unconsciousness and having limbs twisted in directions you never thought humanly possible has resulted in my learning humility and respect in the most painful of ways.