My Journey
I share my story because people need to know who I am in order to understand how I can help them and, if they are business owners, how I can help them grow their organizations.
Many successful people comment that they have learned more from their failures than they have from their successes, and that is certainly true for me. Failure is a powerful teacher — but if you learn the lessons and apply them — it enables some pretty amazing successes.
I’ve been in the business world for over 45 years. When I first began my career as an engineer, to say that I was a hot mess was the understatement of the decade. I was a good engineer, but I struggled tremendously when it came to being able to manage multiple projects simultaneously. I was trying to keep multiple balls in the air and dropping most of them.
So I went on a quest to learn about organization — how to get and keep my ducks in a row. That quest led me to hire an executive life coach — and he taught me the power of goal setting and how to be organized, disciplined, and consistent in my execution. Those tools were part of the solution — they were key puzzle pieces to be sure — but they didn’t give me the full picture of the puzzle.
But they did enable me to get control of my career and grow up through the ranks of engineering to a point where I was leading large engineering departments and efforts. When I had gone as far as I could in engineering, I realized the need for more education, so I returned to school, earned an MBA, and then moved from engineering into business operations, where I eventually began running businesses for other people.
21 years ago, I decided it was time to be on my own, so I started a company called Optimum Performance Technologies. For the last 21 years, I’ve had the honor and the privilege of working with businesses and individuals all over the world, helping them take their lives and their organizations to new levels of achievement and success. While doing that work, I discovered that many problems in business are people related — and are caused mainly by leaders who haven’t learned how to lead and develop the people on their teams.
As a result, I began focusing on coaching both leaders and team members and, along that pathway, I engaged with the John Maxwell Team and became a John Maxwell certified coach and also a John Maxwell certified DISC consultant.
More of the puzzle pieces of my work began to fall into place — but the puzzle still wasn’t yet complete.
Over a number of years of coaching, I learned that many individuals and organizations don’t succeed because they lack one common ingredient — PURPOSE. It became such a common theme in the work that I do, that I decided to launch a new, exciting, and very focused brand. That brand is The Power of Purpose — and my goal in doing this is two fold: First, I want to educate the world on the Power of Purpose and work with and guide individuals and businesses as they develop a rock solid purpose.
Second, once that purpose is identified, I want to help people get laser focused on the achievement of that purpose, so that they can make their dreams and goals come true.
In launching this brand, I’ve changed the name of the business from Optimum Performance Technologies to Gary L. Smith, because this new effort is based on a success model that I’ve created and honed over the last 45 years. I am tremendously excited about launching this new brand and endeavor because I believe that it is going to impact millions of people around the world with the ability to realize their dreams.
So you might ask, “Why are you doing this? What’s motivating and driving you to do this? One word — IMPACT! My goal is to reach as many people as I can and equip them with the foundational tools they need to succeed for the rest of their lives — and to impact the world for generations to come.
My name is Gary Smith, and this is my story. I tell my story because I want you to know who I am, and because I want to help you become the best you can be, so that you can achieve a life that others only dream about.