Crippled CEO Blog #087:
I’ve made a recent observation that getting to know me well frequently means that your entire life is going to change.
You weren’t planning to change your career, your residence, or your relationship status, but you get to know me, and suddenly your life is being transformed for the better.
Of all the things that I like about myself, this is probably the thing I’m most proud of. This realization has made me reevaluate my purpose.
You might be wondering what I’m talking about, so I’m going to embarrass some people and give abridged examples.
Casey Buckley, my oldest friend, never planned on owning a pool fence business, but after selling his last enterprise, that’s exactly what I talked him into doing, and due to his hard work, dedication, and intelligence, he is now the owner of one of the top pool fence installation companies on Earth.
After getting to know the wonderful Kate well, when she expressed displeasure at her job, I convinced her to come find a home in the Life Saver office. Nearly a decade later, she continues to do amazing there, and now her husband earns his living with Life Saver, as well, and is also crushing it.
My other BFF, Michael McGahee, wasn’t sure what he was going to do when he came back from Chicago. Life Saver’s office made a role for him, and then for his wife, too.
Mr. Michael Doscher came over to install a TV for me. After that project was completed, I recruited him to do additional work around my house. I mentioned to him that my roommate was into him, and now they’ve been dating for almost 2 years. Oh, and despite loving the job he had, I helped him level up… to Life Saver, where he’s coming up on a year of blissful employment.
His girlfriend, my roommate, Lauren has been living with me for seven years, which is a role she probably didn’t expect to fill when we initially met. The man I hired as my chess coach didn’t know he would be starting a pool fence dealership in St. Louis and also becoming our CFO a year later, either.
There are a bunch of other smaller stories, like Gizmo moving in to my parents’ former house across the street to be my neighbor.
So I’ve helped people get careers, significant others, and places to live, what’s my point? Would I like a cookie? First, yes. I do want a cookie.
But my point is that this has all only been possible because I helped myself first.
It’s only after climbing the ladder myself that I could steady it for the next person and help them climb up.
If you want to be a force of positive change in the lives of those closest to you, you need to first change your own life. We all know the metaphor of putting the oxygen mask on ourselves first on a plane before assisting the person next to us. Despite this, we often have a hard time doing it in practice.
And if you are in a position to help, if you have the oxygen mask on yourself, then you have an obligation to assist the person next to you. If your life is going great, and you don’t see the people closest to you having their lives transformed by knowing you, what is going on? Why aren’t you positively impacting the people in your life? Chances are there are ways that you can, you just need to be willing to try.
Because the real secret to all of this is that the life that has been most transformed through all these people’s upgrades… is mine.
(Your mom also likes making a transformation. It involves cosplay and leather. She also gets my weekly text message with a link directly to the most recent blog article. You can sign up for this text by sending a message to the phone number 484848 with the word CRIP in the body of the text.)
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