My Embarrassment of Riches

First, let’s go back in time a little ways.  Many years before college, or even high school, I started my first little business selling holiday cards.  I was the only 12 year old I knew with a checking account which I used to pay for the cards that I later sold.  Over the years since then, I’ve had many entrepreneurial ideas, but for the most part, I’ve been employed by others most of the time.  Now, I’m over 40 and I’ve finally come across what may be my best business idea ever, but I’m too embarrassed to make it a success because I would be ashamed to make money with it.

Am I ashamed of making money?  No!  I actually have a relatively healthy income that puts me in the top 5% of the US, and I’m not embarrassed of that.  I’m proud that I’ve worked hard and I fully appreciate that I’ve had many undeserved blessings that contribute to that financial success.  I’ve had some windfalls and I’m not embarrassed of them either.  I’m actually proud of how my wife and I have learned to manage our money to God’s glory and give money, time and spirit to do good works.  Then what kind of business idea would I be embarrassed of making money?  

Ironically, it is a message that is partially about how badly I managed money before and got myself into a heap of debt.  It’s a message that could help save a lot of people from a lot of pain and suffering from debt to addictions, bad habits to bad relationships.  So far, I’ve captured the story in form of a short novel (buy a copy of Pillows For Your Prison Cell for your friend today), but I’d like to reconfigure the message in all forms of media over time.  Eventually, I believe it would make a powerful play for the stage, a fantastic feature film, an awesome interactive VR experience, and a fun children’s story book.  I want to create weekend retreats to give people the opportunity to take the message and apply it to their own lives.  I went to create sensational events with bands and multimedia to reach young people.  I want to create workbooks for churches and small groups.  I want to create curriculum for use in public schools.  I want to get the message into the hands of college students across the country in campus-wide reading programs.  In short, I want to create a thriving, profitable business that has a positive impact on hundreds or thousands or even millions of people.  So what’s wrong?  
I am so embarrassed of the possibility of making money doing this.  I’m embarrassed to even admit that I’m embarrassed.  The only reason I’m doing it is in the hopes that some of you reading this can help me overcome my ridiculous conclusion.  

Somehow, in my mind, it would be perfectly acceptable to create a new hotel reviews website (another one of my ideas) and build it into a thriving business used by millions of people and sell it for a massive amount of money to Expedia or Priceline.  Making $30 million with a software/app company would be fine.  Not so with a book that aims to help people!  

Is my hang-up tied to the notion that doing good should not, pay well?  Look at what our society says.  Consider teachers, very high on the doing good scale, very low on the pay scale.  Counselors and therapists, same thing.  Pastors, mostly same.  Heck, the highest paid public employee in most states is a Football or Basketball coach!!!  It’s ok to earn $1 million per year as the Football coach at the University of [any state] but it’s not reasonable to pay teachers a living wage.  

At this point, I have to thank Ben & Jerry’s, Patagonia, Tom’s Shoes and others that have paved the way showing that it’s perfectly fine to do something well and make money and be a blessing to others in the process.  Earlier this year I decided that 2016 would be the year that I start seriously investing energy into this venture.  I am taking a crack at this.  I still have a day job, so this is a weekends and evenings kind of thing, but I’ve hired others to help me.  If you are interested in helping me succeed in any way down this path, I’d love to hear about it.  I’m looking for script writers, translators, artists, musicians, photographers, film makers, VR designers, and anybody that has a passion for helping people live the full, rich, and meaningful life that God designed us to live.  If that’s you, drop me a line at mark@pfypc.com.  Oh, and if you’d like to invest in this venture, I’ll need that too.  

Upward and Onward, Mark

Give Yourself a Break or Your Self Will Take One from You

As a sophomore fighting to keep up at an Ivy League university after a blue collar high school education, I was struggling to find time for reading the Bible.  I had not been admitted to Cornell as a regular freshman because I was not good enough to get accepted.  Instead, I had been admitted for January admission off the waitlist along with a handful of other “second rate” applicants.  I got into Cornell by the skin of my teeth.  So, I was working hard to fit in among a class of better prepared kids from prestigious high schools around the world.  Class work was hard and on top of that I had to work 20 hours a week to help pay for an education that my parents couldn’t possibly afford.  So that was my excuse for why I didn’t have time to read the Bible. 

The trouble was that the more I learned about God, the more I wanted to read the Bible and found myself hungering for it.  “As the dear thirsts for the water” the Psalmist says.  But my schedule just didn’t allow for it, or so I thought.  That is, until I sprained my knee in a weekend game of touch football.  As I prepared to leave the ER, the doctor explained that I must ice my leg twice a day for 20 minutes, once in the morning and once in the evening.  I was motivated to get my leg back in shape, so I was absolutely willing to do exactly as he said.  

The first time I sat down to ice my knee, I thought to myself, “This sucks.  What am I supposed to do for the next 20 minutes while I’m stuck here.”  Then it occurred to me that I could read the Bible.  So every time I iced my leg, I read the Word of God.  Amazingly, my life didn’t fall apart.  My work got done, my studying got done, I had fun with my friends, and my grades didn’t suffer.  As my leg healed, I remember thinking that it was a shame I wouldn’t have time to read once the icing was no longer required.  I actually thought that!  But thankfully, I also realized the craziness of that conclusion.  This accident had shown me that I had always had the time, I just wasn’t prioritizing it effectively.  That lesson stuck with me.  If I didn't give myself a break, my self would take one from me.   

Think about it.  Don't you find it to be true in your life?  If you push too hard, your body pushes back.  You work long hours on end, and you get sick.  You run too many miles to prep for the marathon and you get an injury.  You rush to catch the ferry and you miss it.  At least that's what happens to me.  Your body was designed by God to have breaks.  That's why we sleep.  That's why we take a Sabbath day of rest.  That's why you should take a vacation.  Seriously, I'm talking to YOU (you know who you are, you haven't take a REAL vacation for years.).  

I've tried to really live by this mantra and it's helped me and my family in two ways.  First, it helps us to slow down and take time the "smell the roses" along the way.  (SIde note, the next time you see roses, take a moment and smell them; you won't regret it.)  We will regularly choose to do something fun in the middle of work as a way to take a break.  Or, sometimes we need to to just stop and do nothing in the middle of a lot of work and play to give ourselves a break.  

Second, it has given us a different perspective when something goes wrong.  Rather than say, "This is so unfair, why is this happening to me?" we look back and ask, "Were we going to fast?  How could we have given ourselves a break earlier?"  I think I've become good enough at this that some people must think I'm a slacker.  Sometimes I worry about it, but then I say to myself, "Self, it's time for a break."    

PS. I have to give credit to Mr. Sam Moyle, one of my favorite high school teachers, for regularly saying, "So I said to myself, 'Self'..."  I love saying that and it partially inspired this mantra.  

QUESTION: When was the last time you DIDN'T take a break and paid for it when something when wrong?  Tell me about a time you DID take a break and it was just what the doctor ordered?  

What's your Faith Quotient?

You hear a lot of talk about IQ (Intelligence Quotient), and since it's so clearly measured (at least according to some) it's fun to figure out who has the biggest score and then be jealous of them or assume that their IQ explains their success.  In recent decades there's been a lot of emphasis on EIQ (Emotional Intelligence Quotient) and recognizing that it's as important and possibly more important to attaining "success".  Now I put quotes around success because most of the time in business or personal fulfillment literature, success is closely correlated to money.  But you and I both know how untrue that is.  Of course, now I have to admit that while I know in my head that money won't make me happy, I still want more of it, and still measure success in terms of money constantly.  OK, but what is success?  What if success were tied to something more like satisfaction with life?  Or maybe even better would be satisfaction multiplied by positive impact?  What if I had very little mullah, but felt very satiated AND had a significant impact on the world around me?  For instance, what if I were a kindergarten teacher at a private school that couldn't afford to pay me well because the state didn't support independent educational options?  I might impact hundreds of kids over the course of my life and each of them in a deeply powerful and personal way, but I wouldn't likely make much money or find myself on the front of any magazine's 40 under 40 list.    

So, what about FQ?  I know, it looks a little bit like a four letter word, but it stands for Faith Quotient.  How successful could you be if you had only average IQ and average EQ but high FQ?  When I think of high FQ, I think of people like David Wilkerson.  I don't know how much of the other two he had, but he had heaps of grace mixed with mounds of faith and he leveraged them both to awesome effect.  All three of these quotients are gifts from God and to him who has been given much, much is expected.  Whether you're smart, or good with people, or have deep pockets of faith, you have what you have to bring glory to God.  And when you use your gifts to bless the world around you, you bring glory to your maker.  We have both the duty and the joy of taking whatever quotients we've been given to impact the world and that is my definition of "success".  

"Until now you've not asked for anything in my name.  Ask and you will receive and your joy will be made complete." - John 16:24

So, how about you?  What's your quotient?  Which one is your strength?  Or do you have an even different quotient?  

PS.  I made up Faith Quotient (FQ), but of course I wasn't the first to do so.  Here's an interesting article from 1955 by a game show host on the topic:  http://www.unz.org/Pub/AmMercury-1955feb-00129

The Nightmare of Living the Dream

     I used to dream of something going wrong that would force me to "live the dream", but now I'm living it and the pressure is on.

A few years ago I just worked for a boss.  I just had a job.  I flew around the country and occasionally overseas to sell expensive enterprise software to massive corporations.  I had 5 people that worked directly for me and a boss above me.  It was great, and I loved a lot of things about it, but I constantly dreamed of breaking free.  I would be riding my motorcycle home from my office, and think to myself, What if I got in a terrible accident and got paralyzed?

I reasoned that then I would have to quit my job and be "forced" to work on writing and marketing my book.  Plus, I'd have the added benefit of people feeling bad for me, which would give my book a nice PR boost.  I imagined the newspaper article about the guy who got in the motorcycle accident who was fighting for his family and pressing forward on his book despite circumstances stacked against him.  Sounds good doesn't it?

Well, then my company sold, and I earned a nice bonus equivalent to about one year's salary.  Not a huge cushion, not the big IPO payout you hear about, but it was enough to open the door for an opportunity.  I quit my job so that I could "live the dream" and focus on my book full time.

Wahoo!  Freedom!  Oh, snap....  Now what do I do?

The fact is that I knew exactly what to do.  I'd been working on my book for 5 years, and I had a very complete marketing plan and long lists of ToDos.  But there was soooo much to do that it was overwhelming, and I didn't have a boss to prioritize it for me or even a peer with whom I could share challenges and opportunities.  It was all me.  Turns out there's a lot of responsibility in living the dream (which makes me think about all the "Freedom Ain't Free" bumper stickers, but that's another topic....).  The good news was that I didn't have to get paralyzed to "live the dream", but the reality news was, there was a lot of hard work ahead!