About six months ago, while enjoying a nice lunch with a dear friend at a Thai hole-in-the-wall, right in the heart of Dallas, TX, I was thrown totally off guard in the middle of my Chicken Pad-Thai demolition, when my buddy asked me one simple question that literally changed the course of my professional life. "Do you feel like you've inspired more lives this year than you did last year?"
An article from
Let's rewind. For the past 3 years, I had a great job as the Director of Marketing for a technology solutions company in Dallas. The pay was great. The benefits were outstanding. I was well-respected, and generally felt challenged at what I did. I was the young guy, high on the totem pole, soaking in the life of traveling around America for work, routinely eating steak for lunch, receiving golf lessons from the top golf instructors in the world, and still having all the time in the world to spend with my family. It was the American dream, right?
There was something inside me, though, pounding at my heart, reminding me that nothing I was doing was assisting in a battle to challenge conventional wisdom, or help instill a sense of inspiration within the communities I place myself in every day. I felt that aching pain of recognition, knowing my entire professional career was dedicated to earning a paycheck, keeping my benefits, maintaining my social status, and all the while, scrambling for every piece of tangible evidence of produced work, as if I were trying to prove to myself that what I was doing actually meant something.
"Do you feel like you've inspired more lives this year than you did last year?"
At the time I was asked that question, I had just shared with my friend how I felt a desire to leave my job to pursue entrepreneurship, but couldn't rationalize my way into it. With a young family, a mortgage, car payments, and the selfish desires of first-world "needs", we needed a steady income. Entrepreneurship is risky. It's not a career or a job, but a lifestyle that blends into every decision you will ever make for the rest of your life. It's rocky, bumpy, emotional, trying. I had heard it all from every opinionated person I'd ever talked to. It just didn't make sense. Until this moment. "Do you feel like you've inspired more lives this year than you did last year?"
I could not honestly answer that question with a clear conscience. It's not that I hadn't interacted with anyone, or been a light in someone's life, it's the fact that, in the career path I was following, I was not convicting anyone, nor did I even have the opportunity to do so.
Then, it hit me. I was driven by the results and personal benefits of the work I was doing. I felt entitled and deserving. I spent my time worrying about my competition inside the organization I worked for, rather that looking for ways to inspire growth within the organization. If there was something I was assigned to that couldn't directly benefit me financially, I would drag my feet and complain the whole time. Because of the dog-eat-dog culture I had bought in to, my motivation for performance was conditionally exclusive to the perks I could receive. And it wore me out.
As soon as my brain processed the information from the question I had just been asked, the following mission statement hit me, "Help local brands to inspire their community with the power of their story." The fact that I was so worried about not being able to maintain the societally acceptable American lifestyle, and being considered weird within my community was holding me back from being missional-driven, rather than comfort-driven. At that point, I began planning my exit out of my comfortable job, and within 3 months I was out on my own.
I know many of you reading this are thinking (or saying aloud to yourself) that I am nuts. If we're being honest, that's fuel on my fire. I believe that a radical lifestyle should be just that; radical. Unrelenting. Terrifying. Undesirable to the majority. But for the few of you inspired by my story, but fearful of the risks ahead, I say to you, "Do you feel like you've inspired more lives this year than you did last year?"
Go inspire someone in 2015!
Filed Under:
Social Marketing