What’s Keeping you from Real Success?
In her 1980 book Overcoming the Fear of Success, Martha Friedman described her “Family Olympics” paradigm which is a metaphor that refers to the way in which families can unintentionally create an environment that promotes competition and undermines support among family members. She had a history of creating roadblocks for herself until she was 56 years old and I feared I was on the same track back in 1979. My company’s rise was meteoric. After starting with only $300, within 10 months we employed 10 full-time people and within three years had 2,000 accounts with a very high percentage of repeat business. But, rather than being elated, I became depressed.
I began to question my interest in the further development of our sales force and also began to understand why success had created problems for me. In Freidman’s book she explains how she was categorized and labeled a certain way as it related to her siblings and parents. And the reason that she didn’t excel and become a doctor until she was 56 was because she allowed the paradigm to govern her life. The family forces to keep you in place are extremely powerful and when you permit yourself to grow beyond them, it creates a lot of friction from all of the affected family members.
My book, Success and Self-Discovery describes my journey from the US Air Force to college, to San Francisco for a couple of years and finally to becoming an entrepreneur. That’s where the real story begins. I ultimately built a million dollar company and take the reader through the trials, tribulations, and transformations that I faced in real-time because I saved every appointment book and my personal journals since 1976 which had contemporaneous notes. Amazon book reviews say that I’m a great storyteller with amazing detail and that’s exactly why.
For anyone who was belittled by their parents or other authority figures and labeled in a way that created low expectations and even lower self-esteem, both of which have kept them from realizing their full potential, Success and Self-Discovery is a must-read. I describe how I overcame many unexpected and unbelievable personal and business obstacles in order to lead a more fulfilled and profitable life. I tell how hiring my brother almost doomed my business and how my key man tried to steal my business while I was an Ambassador to South Korea for the International Rotary Foundation. At the same time I include invaluable how-to sales, marketing, business, and personal advice that will help everyone.
You will read entertaining stories about the specific steps I took to transform my business from one that pleased others to one that made me truly fulfilled. This business memoir is a testament to the power of determination, innovation, passion, resilience, and luck. Hopefully it will help people avoid some of the pitfalls and painful mistakes that I’ve experienced throughout my own entrepreneurial journey. What’s keeping you from real success?