Inspiration

There I sat on a flight from San Francisco to Chicago.  A week earlier I'd relocated my 2 year old son, 5 month old daughter and my wonderful wife of 10 years from the Rocky Mountain range of Colorado to the Sierra Nevada range of northern Nevada.  I travel quite a bit for work and my wife needed, no DESERVED some help with the kids while I’m on the road.  So we moved closer to her family.

On that flight I finished Robert Herjavec’s book, The Will to Win.  Robert was the keynote speaker at my (then) company’s annual conference for our nationwide Sales Partners, so I received a signed copy of his second book after the event and I’ve been reading a few chapters each time I hit the road.  I don’t have whole lot of time for leisurely reading these days with the little ones running around.

As you saw, I also had the chance to meet Robert and even got a picture.  Robert was speaking to a room full of entrepreneurs in the tech space.  His speech was inspirational and I regularly fielded comments from our Sales Partners on specific pieces which they felt spoke directly to them and their situation.  I’d heard that his books were really good, but I hadn’t yet read any of his material.  Little did I know the emotional roller coaster that I would experience as I read his words.  Throughout my career in B2B sales I’ve read A LOT of books on topics ranging from business planning to sales methodologies and operations. Sprinkled throughout those titles you’d find a number of books that would be classified as "motivational".  The thing I liked most about this particular book is that it had a little bit of each of these crucial components.

The over-arching theme of this book (in my opinion) was the emphasis on purpose, not financial success in order to maximize your success in the business world and in life.  Now, this isn’t necessarily a new concept.  There are plenty of publications that lay out similar principles.  I think it was really the way that Robert laid it out that made it so applicable for me this time.  By telling stories (his own and others') about doing business, his wins and losses and the challenges he and his team faced along the way, he made it all very real and I felt it spoke directly to my heart.

For so long I’ve been chasing success for “the sake of success”, not even really knowing what my desired end-state even looked like.  A couple of years ago a buddy asked me what I was driving for and I gave him the canned response I’d given so many times before, “Man I don’t know, I’m just a squirrel trying to find a nut.” Then he followed that up with a question I wasn’t ready for, “So what does that ‘nut’ look like to you?” After a significant pause I responded with what I thought was the “right” answer to such a question, “$500k annually, that’s when I can take my foot off the gas.” He was gracious in his response and said, “Well there you go.”  Feeling like I sounded like an “ass”, I proceeded to try and explain my logic, “There’s just so much money out there to be had for doing good work, that I feel I’d be selling myself short or ‘settling’ if I eased off before I hit that benchmark.”  Ever gracious he replied, “No worries, man. No judgment here, do your thing.” Since then I find myself regularly reflecting on that conversation and I usually feel a bit silly for even going there.  But I have to accept that those words reflected the condition of my heart’s desires at the time, even if I’d rather not admit it.

Since then we’ve been blessed with 2 amazing and healthy children and I’ve watched my priorities shift.  Now what matters most to me is providing for my family, not only financially, but by being a present father who is actively engaged in my children’s lives and by being the best husband I can (the one that my amazing wife deserves!)  Don’t get me wrong, I still want to establish generational wealth that I can pass on, but I’m no longer solely aiming for that $500k/year number.

It’s often said that, “Timing is everything in business”, and I believe that can be true in life as well.  I now understand that the timing of me finishing Robert’s book on this trip is no coincidence.  This was the message that I needed to hear right now.

I grew up in an amazing family.  Raised by parents who were passionately pursuing the calling that God placed on their hearts.  Looking at it from a financial standpoint it was anything but stable.  They were (and still are) in the ministry and their income was fully dependent upon the charitable giving of others.  This sometimes meant that we didn’t know where the next meal was coming from, we sometimes (rarely) couldn’t afford to do things our friends were doing, and we even had to use candles instead of electricity once or twice.  But we never once went hungry and we rarely missed out on anything of significance. 

More important than income or financial security, we knew that we were unconditionally loved and supported by two incredible parents who would do absolutely anything for us.  I distinctly remember Mom setting aside $2-$5 from her grocery budget over months to be able to help me buy some material thing I “HAD” to have at 15.  I don’t even remember what the item was, but I’ll never forget that gesture and expression of her love.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but looking back I now realize the freedom that kind of love and support represented for us all.  All four of us are now either full-blown entrepreneurs or are pursuing entrepreneurial dreams.  This is a direct reflection of the confidence that was instilled in each of us by the unconditional love and support of our parents.

Robert talks about this in the second-to-last chapter of The Will to Win, “Going Home and Growing Up”.  At the age of 8, before his family immigrated to Canada, he was living with an aunt and uncle in a small, “poor” country town in Croatia.  He never knew he was poor until someone told him so in Canada.  Poverty was temporary, it was a chapter of his life which he knew he would rise above.  It takes a tremendous amount of confidence to be successful in business.  Robert attributes the foundation of his confidence to the fact that he knew he was unconditionally loved, no matter what level of “success” he ever achieved.

I believe this is true for me and my siblings as well. It serves as a reminder and reinforcement to me as I continue to push forward in my career.  The most important thing in my life is my family and my most important job is to make sure my kids know that they are unconditionally loved and supported in whatever they choose to pursue as their life’s work.  I’ll continue to work hard to provide them with the financial security and stability which will make it possible for them to pursue their dreams at full speed, but at the same time I know that lack of finances can’t really stop a dream which is pursued in earnest with a wholesome intent.

SPOILER ALERT - in the last chapter of The Will to Win, “Adam’s Dream and My Reality”, Robert relays the heart-warming story of a young boy who was terminally ill with cancer.  Adam’s dream was to go “really, really fast” in a Ferrari race car.  Robert is a Ferrari enthusiast and racer so he had the opportunity to make Adam’s dream come true just a few months before he succumbed to his illness.  This story literally moved me to tears.  I was getting funny looks from the other folks on the plane, but I didn’t care.  For me it drove home the point that my previous laser-beam focus on income was ill-placed.  None of that matters.  Having an impact on the life of one other person makes it all worth it.  You don’t have to own a Ferrari to impact someone else.  But you do have to be engaged.  If all you’re focused on is making money, then you’re going to miss the opportunity to have an impact on someone else.

I’m going to continue to push myself beyond my comfort zone, but my inspiration for doing so has shifted to things that matter more than accruing wealth.

Thanks for reading,

Todd Scarborough

@toddscar

[email protected]