I'm Happy I Was Pushed to the Brink of Bankruptcy

It Forced Me to Write a Book

I had been working as a successful corporate comedian for ten years when the business collapse of 2009 arrived. The bottom fell out of the stock market, bankruptcies soared by 32% and everything stopped — just like that.

While the entire economy was dealt a big blow, the meeting industry was hit even harder after a few high-profile corporations were publicly criticized for spending shareholder money on “unnecessary” special events at that time. Understandably, many other companies decided not to risk such critical perceptions of their own organizations until things had calmed down. The result was the mass cancellation of planned business gatherings and conferences.

The experience for me and for many industry peers and colleagues — event planners, speaker bureaus, entertainment agencies, hotels, and all forms of meeting suppliers — was unprecedented and devastating, even for those of us who had been in the industry for decades and had seen many economic cycles come and go before.

But never like this.

I didn’t know it at the time, but my phone wouldn’t ring for the next six months. All I knew was that our bank account was shrinking, month by month — a one-way outflow of expenses with no replenishment.

With two children from a previous marriage and my wife in her first trimester of pregnancy with our first child together, I watched her belly grow, my family of four about to become a family of five. And not a stitch of work was in sight.

Like millions of others at that time I was worried; losing more and more confidence in myself and in the situation day by day.

As a self-employed entertainer, I had learned the basics of web design in order to market my services online. I lived in a small town and started pounding the local pavement, walking into shops and stores to see if I might convince a few small business owners to invest in an online presence by hiring me to create a website for their company. I was successful enough to keep us afloat and started getting better at web design. I enjoyed helping business owners tell their story by defining the essence of their unique value and communicating that offering in words and pictures.

As had many others, I’d taken a very large pay cut to find work, but I was relieved to have measurably slowed the draining of our reserves. In fact, I started to think about what it would take to make a profit by dedicating myself to this new profession.

I went to my wife and shared my thoughts.

I told her of the success I was having and some of the ways in which I imagined this design business could grow. I shared my fears regarding our finances and the relief I was feeling in discovering this new potential.

As my wife listened to me make my case, I imagined she was sharing my feeling of relief. But when she spoke, what she said surprised me. Not just her words, but the force behind them — a force that would change my work and the course of our lives together in a dramatic way.

She began by saying that she understood my thinking and that it made sense logically in the face of our circumstances.

“And,” she added, “I?forbid?you to become a web designer!”

She stopped and waited for my brain to catch up. This was not what I expected from the mouth of a pregnant woman.

“That’s not what you are here for,” she continued. “You were born to be in front of audiences, to make them laugh, to entertain them, to lift people up and to inspire them. That’s what you are here to do, and all you need to do is commit to that.?That’s our future!”

Her response blindsided me. I had been called out, confronted for playing small, and at the same time given a huge vote of confidence by my wife.

She had looked straight past all my good reasons for switching professions, past the salesman in me dangling the promise of a secure future, and held who I really am — and who I am?not?— in a fierce and loving demand.

“You are?not?a web designer,” she concluded.

I was both exhilarated and scared by what she was standing for.

On the surface, my fear was concern for our survival, a fear I could have justifiably defended. Underneath, however, was an unconscious reaction. The truth was, I was afraid of something that I had been ignoring — a larger calling and a sensed potential that I could offer something more to my audiences.

That “something more” was, literally,?speaking.

This would be a turning point out of the safety zone which I mentioned earlier. All my work to this point had been as a silent comedian, miming and mugging and circus tricks. And it had all worked beautifully up to now.

Yet secretly I had watched for years while motivational speakers and trainers educated and inspired the same groups I entertained, while thinking to myself, “I could do that if I wanted to.”

But the truth was that I was scared and unsure that I’d be able to pull it off. I’d been holding back on an opportunity to engage a passion for communicating about growth, with?words. While my comedy was a way of lifting people up in humor, I wanted to share more directly what I loved about overcoming fear and living with confidence.

Yet, I had ignored that inspiration and had been suffering exactly from what I wanted to help others to transcend.

There was no question that now was the time to stand for this possibility. My wife knew it, had spoken it clearly, and now I could feel it, too. At the same time, the idea of moving?toward?this new potential felt extremely stressful — so much so that the current state of?familiar?stress looked more attractive than the prospect of the unknown. And even by logical standards, it made no sense. It was a crazy commitment in light of our circumstances and the state of the event industry.

There were no guarantees.

I would need to reinvent myself as a presenter of ideas and content relevant to businesses and corporations that were currently at zero spend for those services, competing with hordes of other speaking candidates looking for work.

Needless to say, it was a huge challenge — and also undeniably the right path to commit to.

Rebirth

It was the spring of 2009.

My wife encouraged me to take advantage of the downtime to fully commit to developing the new material that could take my career to an entirely new level. With the enormous benefit of her support and with nothing but time on my hands, I took the opportunity to engage in an intense period of writing and reflection to find the language that would convey what I believed in.

Yes, I was writing for others, but I had to inspire myself more than anyone to rise to this occasion. I was birthing myself into uncharted territory.

I sat at my desk and committed to write.

For months on end I wrote for eight, ten, twelve hours a day, recording the amazing stories and incidents of my performing and life experience. I searched for a theme I could whole-heartedly stand for.

What did I really have to say? What did I know about? And what would I have the courage to demonstrate?

After months of generating a list of over three hundred potential titles for this collection of writings, I stumbled upon the precise language needed to communicate my new profession.

I was a?professional misbehaver.

A title for my new book effortlessly followed and?7 Rules You Were Born to Breakcame into existence. They were rules that I personally needed to break if I was going to make it through this tunnel, and I followed my own advice while I recorded them, just to keep moving forward.

With no guarantees that this new approach would be accepted or marketable to the meeting industry, I just kept pouring out my thoughts and stories.

The book took shape slowly, but I stuck with it and eventually finished. I began to communicate my new offering as a speaker, along with my entertainment, to customers and clients, old and new.

Work began to materialize and a light appeared at the end of the tunnel.

The following year would produce nearly double the income I had ever earned in a single year, despite a still sluggish economy.

Business grew exponentially as a result of finally walking my talk.

Fear and doubt almost convinced me to walk away from one of the most important opportunities of my life. My wife and I have always held each other accountable for not caving in to our self-doubts and fears. I have held her up and she has held me up. We live in an atmosphere where we challenge each other to keep our head above reactive patterns. Because of the work we do together, and her confident support in this instance, I was able to act from a position of?response.

This story I’m telling, however, is not about my success. It’s about what I almost walked away from, and about what you might be walking away from today in your life.

This story is about what is required to walk?toward?instead of away from our greatest possibility for contribution right now, when there is so much on the line. Not just our own bank account, our health and the well-being of our families, but the stability of global systems — environmentally, politically, economically and socially.

What can you walk toward right now that perhaps you’ve been avoiding or ignoring that will enliven what is true about you?

This story originally appears in my book, “Confident Under Pressure: Discover the Hidden Advantages of Stress.” I’m sharing it here LinkedIn because I believe the biggest reason we don’t find fulfillment in life is because we lose necessity to take risks and to act on our heart’s desire. I hope the story might spark you to reclaim a heartfelt wish to pursue a calling or a purpose you may have set aside.