It’s early Friday evening on July 13, 2012, and I’m at an airport bar at LaGuardia Airport in New York. Outspoken Vice President Joe Biden has publicly called out LaGuardia as “third world.” He’s not wrong. This place is a dated, crowded, dirty, depressing dump of an airport.
The bar is crowded and I’m watching the captions on the news channel as I sip my beer and nibble on some nachos. The volume is turned down. President Obama is giving a speech in Roanoke, Virginia. As I read the captions of his speech, my blood begins to boil.
“Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.”
WTFF???
I didn’t build this business?? Who helped me? Who else travels 35 weeks a year? Who else delivers workshops to unfriendly audiences who would rather get a penicillin shot in the ass than sit in my management classes? I’m doing this all alone, which means I book my own travel, send my own invoices, reach out to clients, do my blog, write my books, shoot training videos, do one-on-one coaching calls.
Where are all these people who supposedly helped me? Who are they? Wow am I pissed!
A few weeks later, I speak with a colleague who is starting out doing what I do for a living. He sees all I’ve accomplished, and his observation is:
“Wow you are really lucky to have all these breaks!”
I tell him luck has nothing to do with it. Then I regurgitate the line from Cal Hockley in Titanic directed at the tipsy and jovial Arch when he comments “all life is a game of luck.”
“No Arch, a real man makes his own luck, right Dawson?”
He says I’m lucky because I have websites, videos, books, a blog, a mailing list, tons of curriculum, the means to print custom workbooks, great postcards and business cards. I have some of the highest ratings of the instructors in the American Management Association where I’m doing some contract work.
Later, I think about luck. Was I lucky? Maybe. But maybe what I received is luck someone else shared with me. And for this, I had a long list of people who invested in me.
In 1986, while stationed overseas, the medical and dental departments receive a Toshiba T-100 all-in-one computer with a floppy disk drive. There are no instructions. Fortunately, one of the corpsmen, HM2 Jeff Moore, from the medical department we were co-located with, knows quite a bit. I’m interested so he tells me about floppy disks and RAM and hard drives and the difference between a bit and a byte. I’m hooked. I buy an Apple IIC from the Navy Exchange. After befriending a couple of the Air Force guys that run the weather station, I learn even more. I sell the Apple and buy my first PC. It has a massive 20MB hard drive and a color monitor. I master it. And those computer skills prove valuable later, leading me to better jobs in the Navy and the one that gets me to Washington DC. It’s how I know the way to build websites and desktop publishing and graphics. It’s how I know to design graphics and databases and edit video and record podcasts. It was thanks to Jeff. There was no way I could market my business without what I learned from him.
In 1989, I take an Art History class at Cerritos College while stationed at Naval Hospital Long Beach. It fits into my schedule, and I need one more humanities course. Class is every Thursday night from 6-9PM and held in a large theater. The instructor is an affable guy who is a magnificent storyteller. He shows us the paintings and sculptures on slides from a carousel and takes us from the Middle Ages to the Baroque period. I fall in love with art, particularly Renaissance Art. Even though I don’t need it, I sign up for his other class, which covers primitive cave paintings all the way to the Middle Ages. It’s just as good. As much as I love art, I love his stories and sense of humor even more. Even today, my style of teaching mirrors his. I only wish I could remember his name. There is no way I could tell stories and appreciate art and incorporate it into my training without what I learned from him.
In 1998, as I prepare to leave the Navy and embark on my management consulting and training career, I’m invited to attend a train-the-trainer class for the Navy’s Total Quality Leadership program. This is exciting for me as I see it as a resume builder for my civilian career. The lead trainer is a civilian from the Naval Medical Center for Organizational Development (NMCOD) named Tony Cocove. He is a great trainer and an expert in linking the unfamiliar to the familiar. And he tells great stories. He is impressed with me. It’s the first positive thing I’ve heard about my future plans. I’m grateful for this.
I speak to Tony offline about my intentions and he is in my corner. He spends hours helping me organize my accomplishments and guiding my career. In 2003, I contract Tony to do a workshop for me. He does not disappoint. A few years later, as a contract instructor for the American Management Association I’m part of a panel in DC wooing Federal customers. My portion is on The Three-Legged Stool of Great Performance. Tony is in the audience. I am so excited. I mention that my mentor is in the room. Tony is proud of me. There is no way I would be the trainer I am today if it wasn’t for Tony.
In 2001, a few weeks after terrorists crash a plane into the Pentagon, DC is on high alert. I currently work full time at my day job as the Management Education Specialist at Holy Cross Hospital. I keep my former full-time job as Director of Professional Development at CSA, a trade association. I work all day in Silver Spring and then metro to 12th and G, work until around 11PM and then head home. It’s grueling but it’s helping us get completely out of debt.
One early evening, around 6PM, I enter the CSA offices and see a light on in the back. Somebody is still here working. It’s Ron Mueller, our newly contracted Director of Membership. He is filling in for Paul who has cancer. Eventually Ron would go full time. I haven’t met him yet, so I head his way to introduce myself.
As I walk down the hall, I see him taking a swig from a bottle of vodka. He hides it in his desk drawer when he sees me.
Ron is an interesting guy. He is a Naval Academy grad and a retired Navy Captain. He worked in advertising for a few years, at an agency like the one featured on Mad Men, then got interested in helping entrepreneurs maximize their tax benefits in home-based businesses. I tell him my dream to start my own business, and he encourages me to do it now so I can maximize tax breaks. When I tell him I don’t know much about that, he reaches into his desk and pulls out a book entitled It’s What You Keep that Counts, Not How Much You Make. Ron is the author.
I’m amazed.
“You wrote this?” I asked. “I’ve always wanted to write a book. How did you get it published?”
He tells me he self-published it. And not through some vanity organization. He started his own publishing company.
Ron shares it all that with me. His expertise. His resources include Lori Perkins who prints many of my early books and Michael Cartwright who designs my covers. Because of Ron, I publish my first book From Cave to Cubicle: A Practical Guide to Organizational Behavior in 2005. Since then, I’ve written many books and created a ton of workbooks. There is no way I would have this business and get speaking gigs if I didn’t have books. And there would be no books if Ron Mueller hadn’t invested in me.
I don’t think any of this was me discovering luck. And I certainly didn’t create it. And I now know that President Obama was correct. We all have people in our lives who directly or indirectly share their luck with us. I have no idea where Jeff Moore learned about computers, but somebody taught him. I don’t know who mentored that amazing art history teacher and made him so engaging, but he likely had a role model. Tony’s origin story is a mystery, but I’m certain someone once helped him become an amazing trainer. Ron likely had someone get him interested in tax savings and showed him the secrets of self-publishing. Someone shared luck with them. They in turn shared luck with me.
Now it’s my job to share it with others. It’s your job too. Whatever success you have today is certainly yours. But now I agree that we don’t do it alone. I sure didn’t.
Who do you need to reach out to this week to thank for sharing luck with you? Who will you be sharing some luck with?