A Christmas Story

With inflation up and layoffs trending in the wrong direction, counting your blessings and paying them forward has never been more important! What you put out to the world will return to you tenfold. I am living proof of this and with that said, here is my Christmas Story...

In the Summer of 2021, amidst the height of the pandemic, I was a husband and a father to a newborn and a young toddler. After a series of turning points, both inside and outside of my control, I decided to exit the 24/7 - 365 hospitality/hotel management world that had consumed the last 20 years of my life. With such a long and storied career, I knew I could always return, but a career change was needed for enough reasons to fill up an additional future blog post for each one. As I worked diligently to find a new role outside the realm of operations, things got tighter and tighter financially speaking, and just like so many others around this time, our family experienced a fairly light Christmas right as the "second wave" of the pandemic was beginning to wind down.?

Trying to break into the hospitality tech industry was proving to be VERY difficult. It was not an easy go, and it became a full-time job in and of itself that I had spent the last six months struggling to perform well at. Having come fairly close to some great roles, only to receive that cookie-cutter hiring process breakup email, "it's not us, it's you" never failed to drive home a solid sense of self-doubt. With enough of those pinging my email, one after another, the concern grew that my hard work and dedication to this career change would not pay off as originally planned. As the 2021 holiday season grew near, I reluctantly began interviewing for hospitality management roles again. It was the safety net I knew I could always fall back on, but it was not an ideal choice as I had just spent the past half year putting everything I had into market research, company analysis, prepping, resume re-writes, interviews, cover letters, thank you letters - you name it.

By December 2021, I had applied and re-applied to a whole manner of companies related to hospitality tech. All I wanted for Christmas was a new job!

However, the reality was that the vicissitudes of this career change were uncertain and fast becoming a point of great consternation. The money I set aside to chase this goal was drying up quickly. I stayed persistent and optimistic, but with my son preparing to enter preschool the following month - I needed traction, now. Just as they do, a belated Christmas miracle arrived in late December, and things suddenly turned in the right direction. I began receiving callbacks from companies I had previously interviewed with, but the conversation had gone cold because... the rush of the holiday season, the quintessential Q4 push, post-pandemic uncertainty, and hiring freezes? Who knows? Who cares, right? All I know is that I am now back in the driver's seat, confident and hyper-experienced in the art of the interview process! Most importantly, in this group of callbacks was the first and top choice for my pivot into hospitality tech. This was all too good to be true. Things were finally looking up as the feeling of serenity began to enter my peripheral. Having been through so much those past few months, any tasty ego chip that lay upon my shoulder was humbly devoured.

It is my contention that you gotta go through it to get to it

Was it a miracle? Was it timing? Was it my perseverance? Be it a trifecta of existential karma or just the fact that my future employer was preparing for an explosive year - a job offer was made, and I was beyond exultant to have accepted a role with one of the world's most innovative and forward-thinking hospitality software companies. My first day was January 31st, 2022 - one day before my birthday! What a gift! Within my first week of employment, I had an overwhelming sense of security, gratitude, and the premonition that my life and career were on a positive trajectory. In one week, I experienced more drive and determination to succeed than in a two-decade-long career in hospitality operations. I had ripped off the proverbial review mirror, tossed it out the window, and it was petal to the metal...

In my first month, I was given a very green, unfished territory and my first goal by my manager. A coach and confidant, this manager summed up my new role in just a few simple words:

You get out of this job, what you put into it. I'll give you the tools you need to succeeed, but the grind...thats on you!

No truer words have ever been spoken. The funny thing is, "you get out of it what you put into it" really applies to just about everything we do in life. With that and several other instances of similar encouragement over the next few weeks I had 5x'd my first goal, and two of the resulting opportunities landed sales, adding ARR to the bottom line within my first 30 days of hire! The shark tank was open, and I was swimming with nothing but an ocean of bait ahead of me!

Although I was on fire, a deep freeze crept across most of the Northeast, and we were experiencing temperatures under 10 degrees for the past several days. As I was driving home from a late-night industry mixer, I pulled into my neighborhood, rounded the corner onto my street, and almost ran over a large FedEx package lying in the street near the curb of my elderly neighbor's home. In the pitch-black night, I got out to check the label and drop the package at her door, but her drive, grass, and walkways were all covered in a thick layer of slippery ice. So I tossed the package in my trunk and would figure out how to safely bring it to her in the morning light.?

During breakfast that Saturday morning, I was telling my wife what she would now call "the most dramatic car vs package near accident story, ever”, and my 2-year-old son, JoJo, from the perch of his highchair, started chiming in and relentlessly exclaiming, "WE NEED TO SALT THE DRIVEWAY! This juicebox-drunk diatribe went on for several more minutes...

Something had come over him in that moment. He was destined to ensure "Miss Yinda’s" (Linda) home was free and clear of ice so she could safely make passage to and fro. Under JoJo's strict instructions, we bundled up heavy and headed out to the garage to begin packing for our journey next door. We had packed salt, sand, and shovels into the back of his John Deere powerwheel and we were off! JoJo had set upon this service mission and nothing was going to stop him! I was merely a conduit, just along for the ride, a videographer - if you will. I had no idea he even knew how to or what de-icing a road entailed. For someone who could barely verbalize what he was doing, I was astounded at how driven and determined he was.

JoJo got right down to business, salting the walkways and breaking up large sheets of ice at Miss Linda's. With reckless abandonment, he loaded them up and hauled them away to our backyard woods, only to return for another load - repeating this process for over two hours! I had never seen anything like this from him, let alone a toddler! The focus he had in the cold that was nearly the same degree as his age was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. We finished the job, had lunch and cookies in an ever-grateful Miss Linda's garage. As a proud father, I edited bits of the videos I made that day, and posted them to YouTube and on a local community parents group.

A week later, this cute and heartwarming video spread with toddler-sized virality, and soon enough, the Boston Globe was interviewing us for a story on "good deeds of children in a post-pandemic, cabin-fevered, world gone wrong" The feedback from the video and subsequent story was amazing. We had inspired other children that no matter your age, or what's in front of you, you can do good deeds and make a difference!

That's when it hit me, we needed to capitalize on this moment and use it for the greater good

We aimed to gather children and parents of all ages, get together, take action, and show them how to directly impact your community! We started off by hosting donations-only LemonAID Stands at farmers' markets, festivals, and other town gatherings. We raised money for the National Mental Alliance donation bin at our local farm stand, and later that year, we took the remaining funds, matched them, and sought our three local families in need of assistance during the 2022 holiday season.

Although I was only driving forward at my job, never looking back, a year in review would show you I was closing in on my second promotion at my new company! It's hard to believe that at that same time last year, I was wrought with just about as much anxiety as I had before I left my career in hospitality! I couldn't help but think back to how much uncertainty and concern I had about the future, for me, my family, and my job prospects. Even worse that holiday season, that ever-stressful plague of emotions that most parents get, that is tightening finances all while trying to provide our children with a deluge of gifts under the tree. Needless to say, the sense of gratitude I was feeling 12 months later drove me to expand JoJo's Good Deeds and truly begin to make a difference by counting our blessings and paying them forward!?

Fast forward to 2023, we hosted several more successful stands serving our famously refreshing "Cool, Crisp Cape Cod LemonAID." As our nonprofit profile grew, we embarked on our newest endeavor, CocoAID! We wanted to focus on making a maximum impact on our local community this holiday season. We sought out four families who would be experiencing what my own family lived back in 2021...

Last night, we made drop-offs of gifts, groceries, and dinners, delivering holiday cheer to families with young children needing that extra help, that boost of "things are going to be okay" confidence, and goodwill this holiday season! The best part of this whole experience was that the unprompted children of each family we delivered to asked to donate and how they could help out JoJo's Good Deeds Foundation in hopes of being able to pay it forward to the next family!

It's working. Our mission, the one thing we set out to accomplish, is happening...

We want to Inspire children, regardless of age or circumstance, to do good deeds!

In this age of brand marketing and materialism that the holiday season conflates and promotes, leave it to the children to put all that aside and take the lead on what is real in this world - service to one another.

Spread goodwill and cheer. Count your blessings today, peel one off, and pay it forward...

Watch that good deed ripple in your community pond and grow into a tsunami of service!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS AND MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU AND YOURS!

Click here to learn more about JoJo's Good Deeds (a like, share, and follow goes a long way!)

Have feedback? Want to get involved? - - - > [email protected]