Table of contents
Introduction
Chapter One
Question Everything and
Find a Better Way
To Do Anything
Chapter Two
What Do You Want Most?
Chapter Three
Be Nice No Matter What
Chapter Four
It’s The Tough
Things That Teach You
Chapter Five
If You Don’t Like
What You’re Doing, So What?
Chapter Six
Seek Improvement Everywhere
and In All Things
Chapter Seven
Stand Out From The Crowd
Chapter Eight
Take People With
You On Your Journey
Chapter Nine
Work-Life Balance
Chapter Ten
If You’re Going To Do Anything,
Do It All The Way
Chapter Eleven
Give Back To Everyone You Can
Chapter Twelve
Heal Yourself With Your Mind
Conclusion
Chapter Ten
If You’re Going To Do Anything, Do It All The Way
“I have this great idea,” I said. “I want to write a book for my kids and the generations to come.” It was a crazy idea. I thought it would be hard to do, and it has been harder than I thought. But I prefer doing things that are hard, so it fits in perfectly with who I want to be. This is my favorite chapter to write for my kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids.
Hopefully, you will understand that the effort you put into everything you do will provide you with a huge advantage. If you put in the time to practice or study—anything from sports to the arts to salesmanship or managing money—then you will excel. The harder it is to do, the more time it will take to learn. You will learn more by doing the hard things, but you will learn nothing when doing something easy. I hope you learn to think bigger, better, and broader and realize that you can do it. I hope you will ask questions and learn about people instead of judging those around you. When you find the best people, the people who think like this, the people who do the hard things, spend time with those people. They will support you and lift you up. Being in their company will teach you more and help you to see things you might not have seen before.
Adrian Thomas is someone I want to spend as much time with as possible. He is always positive and thoughtful. He’s inquisitive, never judges, and always asks good questions. One specific time that we were together, we talked about the company he runs. At the time, his company was making a profit of $1 million per month. Now, my company has been profitable most years, but never that profitable, and never profitable over several years in a row. This might sound crazy to some big businesspeople, but it’s the truth. When I heard that Adrian’s company was profitable at $1 million per month, I realized that my company had never been profitable. I didn’t make $1 million per year, let alone per month. But at that moment, my eyes were opened to greater possibilities than I had ever seen before. Could I make my company profitable at $1 million per year and, even better, at $1 million per month?
That seemed really hard to do, but I chased after that goal, and two years later, we saw a profit of $2 million in one year. The trick was to sustain that and grow from there. I thought I was doing big things, but to increase my goals, I needed to spend even more time around people with bigger goals and thoughts than I did.
Thinking big and doing big things is about looking into the distance to see where you are going, instead of looking in the here and now at what other people are doing or not doing.
Planning your future by choosing what you want to do, where you want to go, and how fast you can get there is living your life with intent. I know people who go through life and let things happen to them instead of making things happen. I always want to be intentional about what I do and where I want to go.
At about the age of forty, I chose to do marathons, not half marathons, because, as I often tell people, why would I do anything that starts with the word half? My father taught me never to do things halfway.
When I was a young man, I started drinking red wine—not just any wine, but red wine. I didn’t like it at first, but I had been underweight most of my life, and I discovered if I drank red wine with dinner instead of a Coke, I could eat more. You see, the bubbles in the Coke made me feel full faster, but when I drank red wine instead, I could eat more and gain a little weight. It might have been a silly reason to get started with wine, but that’s how it happened. Once I learned to like it and read about wines from around the world, I began to collect some amazing red wines. I figured if I like it, I might as well have a refrigerated wine cellar with thousands of bottles of wine in it.
As youngsters, we drink coffee with milk. But adults and grown-ups often don’t add milk to theirs. I started drinking coffee in college, but I wanted to drink it black, which took some getting used to. I eventually learned to like my coffee without any milk. I don’t know when I went from drinking coffee to needing coffee. I guess I don’t really need it, but I like it, and enough studies show that as long as you don’t drink too much, it can have health benefits. I drink coffee every day, and although it took me until later in life, I realized if I was going to drink so much coffee, I could buy raw coffee beans and learn to roast them myself. I’m not sure what it is in my personality that once I think of something, I want to do it, to learn about it, and do it bigger than anyone else, or simply do things that others might not.
My father gave me so much good advice, and I give him credit for this. He said, “You can do any job you like, or you can like any job you do. And if you can make an excellent income at a job, why not learn to like that one?” I don’t know if he would have remembered saying that, but it changed how I saw things. It was apparent to me at a young age that, with my personality, I should work for myself. I had a hard time taking instructions, especially from people I didn’t think knew what they were talking about. As a teenager, I had an innate ability to listen to someone and decide whether I agreed with them or not. I wouldn’t simply agree with someone because they were older than me or had a degree in some specialty. I was never intentionally disrespectful, but if what someone said did not make sense to me, then I was no longer interested in listening.
Even at the age of fifty, my personality test says, “Chris (that’s your Pop’s name) is good at following the rules.” When I read that, I thought, Okay, good. I’ve finally grown up. I’m fifty, and I am now ready to follow the rules. But when I read the next sentence, a grin spread across my face: “Chris is good at following the rules, but only if he made them.” Then I thought, Oh Lord, I’m never going to change. Who you are is who you are. You can act differently and pretend to be some body different, but underneath it all, you are who you are.
For me, it was important that I start a business and make the rules. I have come to work every day for thirty-three years, and I’m still listening to podcasts, roasting coffee, collecting wine, going to conferences, and discovering that there is more to learn. There are forty-eight people working at Lead Concepts today, and I get the pleasure of seeing all of them most days. I hire them, and I pay them. I make sure they earn a good living. We work together toward that end, all of us. And that gets back to communication.
As I write this today, I’m fifty-six. My business could have been two or three times bigger if I had allowed myself to think bigger when I was twenty-four. But the company now, after thirty-three years, is slated for massive growth because I can now see the future. I can see the bigger opportunity to take the company from a direct mail advertising company limited to the confines of the United States Postal Service to an international digital marketing company specializing in lead generation in the direct mail and Facebook world for multiple markets. And that’s just the beginning.
When you look at something that you want to do—and this will be difficult—ask yourself what it could be in ten years, twenty years, thirty years, forty years. As a young person, I wasn’t able to do that. I don’t know if you’ll be able to do that either. But after reading these words, I hope you can get to that spot sooner than I was able to. Since I spent a lot of time at work, I created a wonderful life inside the world of Lead Concepts. I’ve had a great career and still expect to be doing this for a while. And how lucky am I that Courtney, Jessica, and Christopher are all working here? I get to work with my brother, Steve. My mom, Lucy, your great-grandmother, comes to the office every day. Work-life balance—I brought my life to work, and I get to see everybody, the whole family, every day. I saw that possibility and knew I could create it many, many years ago. That’s what I’ve always wanted most in life. Running a business may not be right for you. That’s okay. You can still be your best at whatever you’re doing. That’s the most we can all ask for.
Put in the effort to learn, grow, and ask questions, and don’t worry about what other people are doing or if they’re growing faster than you or earning more money than you. That doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that you’re doing a little bit more, a little bit better each year, and hopefully lifting up the people around you along the way.
Table of contents
Introduction
Chapter One
Question Everything and
Find a Better Way
To Do Anything
Chapter Two
What Do You Want Most?
Chapter Three
Be Nice No Matter What
Chapter Four
It’s The Tough
Things That Teach You
Chapter Five
If You Don’t Like
What You’re Doing, So What?
Chapter Six
Seek Improvement Everywhere
and In All Things
Chapter Seven
Stand Out From The Crowd
Chapter Eight
Take People With
You On Your Journey
Chapter Nine
Work-Life Balance
Chapter Ten
If You’re Going To Do Anything,
Do It All The Way
Chapter Eleven
Give Back To Everyone You Can
Chapter Twelve
Heal Yourself With Your Mind
Conclusion