While pondering the year ahead the last few days, I realized something rather significant. I’m not supposed to be rich!
Bear with me for a few minutes! This isn’t a humble brag by my Ego. It’s a lesson from my Soul.
(Oh shit, I better deliver a good story now!)
At age twenty-two, I chose to be an Inspirer. This wasn’t my major in college. No career counselor suggested I do it. The opposite in fact. I wandered into my campus career center at the end of my sophomore year and asked about internships.
The counselor got very excited, and judging by how empty the place was, I figured I was her only student visitor that day, week, or maybe even, that month! 🤣
After a short interview, she said “I have just the internship for you Eric!” She then helped me land a prestigious internship at Merrill Lynch for my junior year.
I vividly remember her telling me, “You can make a lot of money if you become a Stockbroker Eric!”
After a semester cold calling prospective clients for my assigned Senior Stockbroker, I returned to my career center to get another internship.
This time she said, “With your excellent resume (having Merrill Lunch on my resume apparently gave me a leg up on the rest of the student body), I think you can get the most prestigious internship we have to offer Eric.”
Oh yaeh, what company is that? I asked.
“Xerox Corporation Eric!”, she excitedly replied. “It’s the most coveted internship we have. If you do well, Xerox will likely hire you straight out of college. Xerox sales people are some of our richest alumni!
I said yes. I worked for Xerox the last semester of my senior year three days per week from 1 pm till 5 pm, instead of doing what all my classmates were doing – hanging out on the beach, drinking beers!
What did I learn from this sacrifice? That the only thing more boring then selling stocks was slinging copiers. 🤣
Both of these prestigious internships were supposed to help me get a lucrative job after graduation and help me begin a fancy career.
I bet the Career Center Director who helped me build my impressive resume thought, “this guy is a gonna be rich someday” and celebrated with a glass of wine for doing their job so well.
Well, my Soul had different plans. It wanted me to be an Inspirer. So, I made a very conscious decision before I graduated. I would not pursue any job or career I didn’t love, just because it had the promise of riches. Instead, I would be an Inspirer!
I quickly learned that I had to create my own opportunities. There were no job listings for Inspirers. I also discovered that I equally enjoyed inspiring others. As a result, I added this as an ingredient to my unique career cocktail.
My life’s purpose clear, I set about creating a career that would enable me to be inspired, and to inspire others full time. I remember thinking, if I can just make enough money to get by, that will be good enough for me!
A few months after I graduated, a mentor suggested I read a book called “The Fountainhead” by Ayn Rand. I admired the main character Howard Roark so much that I pledged to adopt his main ethos of only doing “my work, my way!”
This promise to myself lead to a fun run that lasted the next fifteen years as an Inspirer. I started five companies along the way, and even grew one to be quite large. Global in fact!
It made me a little bit rich financially, but a lot more so in terms of joy from getting to be a full time Inspirer!
Along the way, real estate became an important need to keep doing “my work, my way” as an Inspirer. So I taught myself how to buy real estate and went big out of the gate!
I took a massive risk and bought my first commercial property at age 39. It was an eighty year-old theater. Most of you know the story from prior posts so I won’t repeat it here. But I will reiterate this. The theater was a property nobody wanted in a city nobody wanted to do business in. A recipe for success? Most would vote no.
Ironically, this decision would make me rich. Not overnight, but in less than seven years.
During my theater ownership run, a real estate gold rush occurred around me in the city nobody wanted to do business in. All the sudden, everyone did, and land was in demand.
I figured my parking lots might be very valuable to a Developer. So, I sought out a deal. Boy was I right!
This made me even richer! So rich in fact, that I could be an Inspirer the rest of my career without even having to make money doing it.
After this, I bought another unique property that nobody wanted in a city nobody wanted to do business in. The town was Honomu, Hawaii. Why? Cause I needed a magical place to inspire myself and others of coarse! 🌈
In just three years, the property I bought just so I could host inspirational retreats doubled in value. This made me even richer.
So you see, I shouldn’t be rich. At worst, I should be a struggling artist who loves being an artist but doesn’t have a pot to piss in. At best, I should be like that high school football coach everyone loved that stayed at the same high school for forty years cause coaching kids is their passion. I should be that guy! I admire the heck out of that guy! Rich from making a difference in a community, but not rich financially!
The few times I’ve told someone, that doesn’t know me, about my career track, they look at me funny and say, “You sure are lucky!”
This is when I smile. I look at them with steely-eyes with a lot of heart. Then I muster up a familiar resolve forged from thirty years of never giving up on the promise I made myself as a twenty-two year old to live the life of an Inspirer, regardless of the sacrifices, and I say to them…..
Lucky! Is that what I am? I thought it was cause I’m an Inspirer.
Grateful for all of it!
