We recently connected with Cole Jaczko and have shared our conversation below.
Cole, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?
I found my purpose by working really hard to find it. At 25, I was in private equity – everything looked perfect on paper, but I was unhappy and unfulfilled. I was making great money, but that money wasn’t making me happy. I was super stressed and just didn’t like that version of myself.
I decided I needed to find a way out. This can’t be it. I’m not excited about this path. You know, a lot of people struggle to find purpose because you’re not gonna find it in the 30 minutes between Zoom calls while responding to emails. For me, I needed to go through this deep period of self-exploration.
It took me a good two or three years, and I’m still working to find and refine my purpose. I’d encourage anyone going through this: make figuring yourself out your full-time job.
The secret to understanding yourself is just going for really long walks and thinking. Ask yourself: if you’re lucky to live to 80, that’s 4000 weeks on this planet. What do you want to do with that time? What don’t you want to do? You probably don’t want to spend time in a job that makes you stressed and anxious.
Ultimately finding your purpose comes down to just getting to know yourself. Take yourself out on dates – go for these long walks, take yourself out to dinner, crack open a bottle of wine and just sit there and think. Get to know yourself and think about what you want to get out of life. What do you want to do? What is the actual work you want to do? What type of emails do you want to send? What type of meetings do you want to attend? What’s discussed in those meetings?
You can live any life that you want. One of my mentors told me that we all have the capacity to design our lives exactly as we see fit – the only question is whether or not you have the courage to do so. But it really starts by figuring out what is the life that you even want.
Another really interesting part of it is there’s this massive unlearning that has to happen – unlearning everything you’ve absorbed from society and other people’s beliefs that were put onto you. Part of getting to know yourself means, for the first time in your life, truly learning what it means to think for yourself and question things. Question the career path you’re on, question whether you believe in what your boss is saying or the direction of your company.
By asking yourself questions, you learn how to start mapping out the world you want. By questioning everything, you get to contrast what’s going on with what you think should be going on. You’ll find that sometimes there are some really obvious insights hiding right in front of you, and perhaps those insights will be your purpose to bring to life and to profit from.
Many of us feel lost because we follow these prescribed paths – good college, investment banking, private equity. But what happens when that job isn’t what you want? My dad told me, “I can’t help you with what you should do. It’s your life and you get to figure it out.”
I resonate with rapper Big Sean’s purpose: “to be inspired and to inspire others.” My purpose is helping people go through the journey I went through – figuring yourself out so you can become your best and fulfill your potential. I believe if everyone does that, everything in your life falls into place.
Now I’m building the world I wish existed. It’s really fun when there’s no one else who’s been on the path before you and you get to form your own purpose and path.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
Building on the first question about finding purpose, I’ve realized so many people are struggling with this exact issue. It’s not just about purpose—people are struggling with mental health and aren’t as happy, vibrant, confident, and fun-loving as they should be.
I’m sharing everything I’ve learned over the past five years during my own “quarter-life crisis.” I was unfulfilled at work, had just ended a six-year relationship, and experienced the death of two loved ones. These experiences made me realize that life is happening right now, and it’s up to us to make it everything it could be.
I’m working on sharing what I’ve learned about the “game of life”—because life is one big game, and the ultimate test is if you get out of it everything you wanted. I feel so much energy and inspiration to share what I’ve learned to help people find their purpose, joy, confidence, and self-love so they can be the most vibrant, happiest versions of themselves.
Specifically, I’m building my world to fix what I feel the modern world is missing. The human experience is universal—we all want the same things and struggle with the same challenges. The world’s more connected than ever with social media, yet everyone feels more isolated and lonely.
The world I want to create gets back to basics—where we’re meeting each other, having fun together in person, knowing each other, sharing what we’ve learned, and supporting each other. At USC, I studied Pete Carroll, who talked about creating an environment for you to be your best. That’s what I want to create.
Today’s world has been robbed of mentorship, tough conversations, and people in your corner supporting you. I’m working on many things—I love investing, creating content to build community, and ultimately building businesses that fill needs.
My world feels like a country club—everyone’s there together, everyone knows everyone, everyone’s happy. Families know each other, kids are playing, business introductions happen naturally. It’s what it means to have a full community, top to bottom. That’s what I want to create digitally.
The goal is to help, support, learn, and grow together so we can all win together. As I always say – “when we win together, first round is on me at the top!!”
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
1. Self-Love
By far, the most important skill is self-love. I truly believe it’s the foundation for everything. I once came across a quote from rapper Russ who said, “You’re either your biggest critic or your biggest hype man, and it’s your choice.” How you talk to yourself ultimately determines how you feel about yourself.
How do you expect to do anything remarkable with your life? How do you expect to forge your own path or take risks or quit the job you hate when you start every day looking in the mirror and beating yourself up? If you’re trying to do anything worthwhile in life, it’s going to be really hard. You have to be willing to go against the grain, face criticism, and keep going through hundreds of setbacks. If you’re not the biggest fan of yourself, you’ll crumble.
The book that absolutely changed my life was “The Four Agreements.” The biggest takeaway is that you have an infinite capacity to love if you channel the fact that your cup of love is already overflowing. You’re already in an abundance of love, which frees you to spread love openly and widely.
Many people treat love like a trade. They’re afraid to express love or put their heart on the line because they fear they won’t get that love back. But love is a gift. If you already love yourself, you have all the love you need. Your cup is overflowing from friends and family. You can walk around spreading love to everyone – to friends by telling them you’re proud of them, to strangers with compliments. The more you do that, the more love returns to your life, creating a positive flywheel that makes you magnetic.
2. Confidence
The next most important attribute is confidence. Your life ultimately comes down to the amount of confidence you have – the confidence to take chances that could change your life. What if you never took the chances that were meant to go your way?
Most people aren’t nearly as confident as they should be, causing them to shrink in crucial moments. For example, seeing someone attractive in a coffee shop but being too afraid to say hi. You have no idea if the universe put that person there for a reason – they could be your soulmate, but you didn’t have the confidence to simply say hello.
On the flip side of confidence is being okay with failure. I learned to change my definition of failure. All successful people from Jeff Bezos to Kobe Bryant talk about failure. It’s part of the game, a cost of doing business. J.K. Rowling said the only way you won’t fail is if you live so cautiously that you might as well never have lived.
If you fail 100 times but your 101st attempt is a massive success, were those 100 times failures or part of the process? Who cares – you got what you wanted in the end. I changed my life by becoming truly confident and embracing the possibility of failure instead of backing away from it.
I rebuilt my confidence after a breakup shattered it by taking inventory of myself. I realized I’m a great person who brings so much to the table, is loved by many people, and is a bright spot in others’ lives. That became my foundation. As Deion Sanders says, “I already like me. I’m not playing for you to like me. I already like me. I’m good.”
3. Intelligence
The third most important trait is intelligence. As Naval says, “The ultimate test of intelligence is if you’re able to get out of life what you want.” Life is a game, a big playing field, and your intelligence determines how well you navigate it.
It’s competitive out there. You have to be smart enough to figure out where to position yourself, how to position yourself, and how to profit from your position. Intelligence needs to be combined with confidence and risk-taking to matter.
You need to train your intelligence by learning to think for yourself. To win in the modern world, you have to do things others aren’t doing. You make money through unique insights and ideas – Amazon was the result of Jeff Bezos having a unique idea many thought was stupid. Intelligence is figuring out unique insights, building things you wish existed, and ultimately proving yourself right.
Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?
I’m looking for tons of people to partner or collaborate with.
Ultimately, I’m using content as a beacon to find like-minded people. I want those people to be part of the community, the world, and the digital country club that I’m building.
My dream is to have a podcast that’s a mix of interviewing like-minded people who are around 30 and trying to live amazing lives. I always think about how we all have the same 24 hours in a day, and it’s all about using that time most efficiently to get everything we want out of life – to be successful in all aspects, not just purpose, money, and careers, but also in being an incredible family member, friend, and person to have in others’ lives. I want to live a well-balanced life.
The flip side is I also want to interview people who inspire me like Big Sean, Russ, Rick Rubin, Tom Brady, Pete Carroll, Nick Saban, Matthew McConaughey, Mel Robbins, Nick Kokonas, and investors like Nick Sleep, Bill Gurley, and Terry Smith – people who I feel have truly won at the game of life. I’d love to speak with those who have successfully navigated all aspects of their lives and done well in all those realms, to pick their brains about the learnings they can share with us who are trying to follow in their footsteps. Ultimately, that’s what I’d love to bring to life, and if there are any collaboration opportunities to accelerate it, I would love that.
If this resonates with anyone, I’d love to connect with them. I’d love to mentor anyone who is struggling to find their purpose, feeling unfulfilled in their job, struggling with confidence, or feeling like they’re not fulfilling their potential. Even if they are fulfilling their potential, there’s always more room to grow.
I also love working with high performers because we’re all always looking for an edge to get better. I joke about how it’s the people in the cold plunge who already have single-digit body fat who are always trying to look better. I think the same is true of your mind – you can always sharpen how you think about the world and yourself to create a bigger and better life.
I just turned 30, and all these learnings throughout my 20s have been incredible. I always love the opportunity to work with younger people – whether they’re in college, just out of college, in their 20s, or even older than me. I want to pay forward all the things I’ve learned because if I knew then what I know now, it would have supercharged my journey. I want to give that knowledge to others to help supercharge them.
I would love to partner and collaborate with anyone who resonates with any part of these messages.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://locallegends.world/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/colejaczko/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cole-jaczko-a6a51883/
- Twitter: https://x.com/colejaczko
- Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@colejaczkoPodcast appearance for more about me and my story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZytlkPQuaA
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