I was driving home from New Jersey after attending some training on how to become a better public speaker.
I’ve done quite a bit of public speaking in my lifetime.
I regard public speaking as one of my most valuable skills.
In fact, every time I’ve done a speaking engagement, I’ve made money.
Once I did a presentation that earned me more than $18,000.
Given the success I’ve had with public speaking, I figured it was worth me investing in improving my public speaking skills.
As I drove down the highway home from that public speaking training, a few words popped into my mind.
“Damon, You’re Being Selfish!”
I was a bit taken aback by these words.
I was curious, so I paused to hear an explanation for why I was being selfish.
I then recognized the abundance I had achieved in my life.
For the past three years, I had been living my ideal life.
I had built a successful business.
I had developed great relationships with my wife and four children.
We lived in a beautiful house in a great neighborhood.
Every year I was maxing out my retirement savings.
I was doing important work that fulfilled me.
Each month I was taking a few days of vacation to enjoy my life.
I had built a wonderful life with my wife and family.
I had created a wonderful life.
Despite all the good that I had in my life, there was still something missing.
At times I felt disconnected.
At times I felt as if I was going through the motions.
I was technically living an amazing life.
However, I wasn’t emotionally connected to that life.
I had achieved the dreams that had fueled my growth.
Assuming I continued on my current path, I would have a retirement nest egg that would care for me during my silver and golden years.
“Ok, Life is good, why am I being selfish?” I inquired.
Then I thought back on the prior week of speaker training.
That’s when I realized I wasn’t using the gifts and skills I had of storytelling and public speaking to share my story with people.
I recognized that my success in business would be valuable to help other people improve their lives.
I learned lessons from the failures and successes of building my business.
For three years, I had arrived at business and life success.
That success had somehow become hallow because I had met my needs.
More of the same success would not improve my life.
I needed a new vision for the remainder of my life.
I needed to transform my business in a way that would be more fulfilling than my prior path.
I needed to tap into a higher purpose that would fuel me to push myself beyond the bounds of my comfort zone.
I realized that my next step was to use my knowledge, life experience, failures, and successes to help find and navigate their path to their ideal life.
The next phase of my business life is to empower, support, guide, and teach others to fish in the vast ocean of their ideal life.
Business ownership is the most amazing journey I’ve had in my forty plus years on this third rock from the sun.
Through business ownership, I’ve grown to become a better person.
I’ve become self-sufficient.
I’ve built a life for my family and myself that I adore.
I’ve served people as I’ve helped them solve problems.
I’ve learned how to work with people.
I’ve faced my fears and learned to overcome them.
I’ve been able to mentor other people and help them understand they had more in them than they realized.
I’ve been instrumental in changing the lives of my clients.
I’ve helped bring calm to the rollercoaster life that is the path of entrepreneurship.
I’ve experienced embarrassing failures and the agony of defeat.
I’ve seen the seeds of faith that I planted when my back was against the wall grow and bloom into abundance.
I’ve lived a life of creativity that has challenged me daily to become more than I was yesterday.
I live and have lived a wonderful life because of business ownership.
However, business ownership is not for the faint of heart.
Business ownership exacts a heavy price, and the price is a pound of flesh.
If you want to be successful in business, you must adopt four philosophies.
- You must love people.
- You must have a servant’s heart.
- You must be a problem solver.
- You must become creative.
Successful, profitable business ownership is the most creative act I know of.
Successful business ownership is about improving and changing lives.
Each person that ventures into business ownership has unique gifts that enable that person to serve their customers.
Often those gifts were born as the soil of their lives was being tilled by the pains, traumas, and disappointments of life.
Business ownership transforms the lives of the owners and their customers.
Business ownership is a supreme act of creation.
We were born into this life to create.
Our ability as humans to create is what differentiates us from all other animals on this planet.
Rabbi Jonathan Sachs shares the following profound story on creativity.
“In the course of my work, I have visited prisons and centres for young offenders. Many of the people I met there were potentially good. They, like you and me, had dreams, hopes, ambitions, aspirations. They did not want to become criminals. Their tragedy was that often they came from difficult backgrounds. No one took the time to care for them, support them, teach them how to negotiate the world, how to achieve what they wanted through hard work rather than violence and lawbreaking. They lacked a basic self-respect, a sense of their own worth. No one ever told them that they were good.
To see that someone is good and to say so is a creative act itself. To see the good in others and let them see themselves the way we see them is to help someone grow to become the best they can be. “Greater, ”says the Talmud, “is one who causes others to do good than one who does good himself. ”To help others become what they can be is to give birth to creativity in someone else’s soul.
“And God saw that it was good”–this too is part of the work of creation, the subtlest and most beautiful of all. When we recognise the goodness in someone, we do more than create it, we help it to become creative. This is what God does for us, and what He calls on us to do for others. “
May we all recognize the honor we have to serve our customers.
Our customers trust us with their money because we have improved the lives of those we serve.
Our customers need us to see the good in them.
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