Learn to Harness Your Ambition

Ambition = an ardent desire for rank, fame, or power

Let me start this off with a disclaimer. I will turn 44 in a couple months, and thus I am still relatively young. What I'm about relay to you in this brief treatise deals more with how my undisciplined ambition kept me from actually being successful early in my professional life, and almost torpedoed my entire career before I could get it off the ground. I actually have my history with being laid off to thank for that.

Ambition is great. Ambitious individuals are responsible for making the world spin, and for the longest time I wanted to be one of them. As a kid, growing up in less than ideal circumstances, I was never taught how to work my ambition into my daily routine, which resulted in a lackluster performance in school and a wandering mentality. Honestly, I'm 95% sure I'd be classified with a learning disability in today's world. I wanted to achieve greatness, I wanted to be powerful, I wanted the world to know who I was. I wanted to be the one in the big office making high priced deals with dark mahogany furniture puffing on a cigar. I wanted everything, and yet I had no idea on how to get there.

It is well documented that I was a subpar student, and if you are reading this for the first time, go back and read a few of my earlier editions. My ambition was never fully developed in school because it was a foregone conclusion that if I happened to remain out of jail, or alive, that I would just go and work at one of the plants that called Hopewell, VA home. It's what 90% of people did in that area. I had all of these grand ideas of fame and success, but no way to articulate it, and no one to help me formulate how to get there.

At 18 months old, my parents divorced. I lived with my mother for all of my life, up until I left home at 17 to go to college. Yes, I managed to get into a college, though it was touch and go there for a while. Until 1993, I'd see my father every Wednesday and every other weekend. Like most , and I knew he worked hard, but even he was still in Virginia working at a plant. In 1993 my father was promoted to Plant Manager of the Philadelphia location, and then three years later in 1996, he moved to the Columbia, SC plant in the same role. This was the first time that I realized my father was not only ambitious, he knew how to make it work for his success. He had a ton of people working for him, he was teaching economics at a community college, he was traveling all over the place, playing golf all the time, and every meal we'd eat was at a steakhouse. It was a drastic difference from what I was living on a daily basis at home. I wanted to get to that point, but I had zero understanding on how because there was no support from anyone to foster the desire. It just was not a priority.

My college days saw my ambition rise quite a bit. I was out of Hopewell, away from my house, and trying to survive on my own. My friend group was full of people who had grand plans for their lives, and I was stuck in a constant circle of wondering how I can make my mark. Not overly gifted at anything, I saw my friends desire to be athletic trainers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc. Everyone had a plan of how to achieve their form of greatness, while I jumped from computer engineering, to law, and finally settling on business. My thought process was simple, get a degree that is universally recognized, get a job and let the chips fall where they may, but I knew the end result was going to be where everyone knew my name. I would have had a better time going to the bar "Cheers", but I digress. I did enjoy business, so being a successful businessman was the plan. What that looked like, I had no idea. Ultimately, I graduated into a post 9/11 world, and everything went downhill fast.

I found myself lost in a giant fishbowl with no directional insight, or even a leading pathway to follow. I sold in-home water filtration systems, then went to Foot Locker, then moved to Charlotte to work part-time at a YMCA and TPC Piper Glen golf club. All of these things happened in a 12 month period. Once I settled in Charlotte, my ambition, which was not even remotely tamed, became a real problem. TPC Piper Glen is a members only golf club that is home to many wealthy individuals. In my role, I got to know many of these money magnets personally, and they had such wonderful stories of success. Couple that with my time at the YMCA, which was the home YMCA of many professional athletes and powerful business people, I was surrounded by successfully ambitious people. I wanted to be them, and I wanted to do whatever I needed to. Still had zero guidance on how to get there.

When I decided to leave the YMCA for Bank of America, it was solely for nothing more than ego and more money. I wanted to get into the banking world, and this was my ticket with a modest raise that would allow me to take care of my growing family a little better. It wouldn't be as fun, but as my father said, it was time for a real job. After a few months of that, I started getting bored, and I wanted more responsibility. My ambition was pushing me away from the necessary steps to success, and the opportunity to move on arrived with all the promises of being the best thing for a super ambitious person such as myself. Small company, big money to be made, nice office, travel, etc. Then the recession hit, and the layoffs started. When I stumbled back in the workforce in 2010, my ambition was squashed. Eighteen months of no paycheck will remove that as quick a you would remove a biting mosquito from your arm. As I learned to sell, and developed my skillset, the ambition that once disappeared was returning slowly, and I decided to take my talents to another company. Just shy of two years at that company, and I was once again laid off.

It is easy to look back now and say that my ambition put me in terrible situations, but the reality of it is that I had no idea how to harness the desire. I was never taught that becoming successful is a long process, I just wanted it sooner rather than later, and I didn't have time to wait. When an opportunity arose, I pounced, it didn't matter if it was a terrible decision. I was gambling with my career, and for no other reason that I wanted to successful. I wanted the fame. I wanted the power. It wasn't until I started working at Grandbridge that I realized just how important it is to have a strong leader to help guide you. Not only did I have someone in my corner to mentor me, I had a group of leaders that advocated for my growth and development within the company and BB&T, who owned Grandbridge. This was a breath of fresh air, and something I did not take for granted. The right leadership makes all the difference in the world in your growth.

During my young career, I've held many jobs with many companies. That's not a boast, it's literally just fact. I can't change that, yet some of that could have been avoided had I not let my ambition steamroll my thoughts early on. Being pragmatically ambitious will suit everyone, and ultimately lead to success. It takes a sincere amount of patience, mentorship, and true guidance from those leaders you admire, who really want you to be successful. It takes a strong understanding of yourself, and what you really want to achieve. I doubt I'll ever be well known to the world, I don't even know if I'll ever be as successful as I wish. But had I continued to let my ambition torpedo my career, I would not be known to anyone. While it might sound funny to those around me, I credit the layoffs I've experienced to help me understand how to harness my ambition.

We will see what the future holds.