Watch the rest of my conversation with Christian Ries → https://youtu.be/kncKvi-yUmA

My sister was a feminist.

When Gloria Steinem was a Playboy Bunny at the NYC Playboy Club as research for an article series on women, my sister was a Senior at State Teachers College across the river in Jersey City. She was an English major, preparing to be a High School English teacher. But her real interests were in modern dance and painting classes. This was evidenced by her spending all her free time hanging out in Greenwich Village in NYC. This is where the free thinkers shared their counterculture philosophies. My sister, born in 1942, was primed for that thinking.

My father told my sister to go to secretarial school after high school. He expected her to be a secretary, meet a nice man, get married, and raise a family in Jersey City. Even as a Senior in High School, she knew she wanted so much more than that.

She wanted to be an artist, a creative.

She met people in NYC who talked to her differently because they saw her differently. These people, like her, saw the possibilities of changing the world through art and new ideas. She broke free of a society that was handcuffing her freedom of choice with its expectations.

My sister became a teacher after college. She lived at home and taught English at Roselle HS in New Jersey. Within a year, she befriended a physical education teacher. She was from Connecticut. She, too, had an alternative lifestyle idea. She, too, felt suffocated by her parents and community.

Within days of meeting, they found an apartment with a slanted floor and one window on a fire escape in West Greenwich Village. Just last week, this PE teacher, who is now 84, wrote to me and said, “I remember on Saturdays watching your sister sit in front of a blank canvas with a cigarette in one hand and a paintbrush in the other. She would be there painting all day.

They were living the life they chose, not the life their parents expected. They were living at ground zero of the feminist movement. They were there when this new movement was beginning to become a groundswell of change. Women in their twenties were looking for a leader. Gloria Steinem became that leader, their voice.

Being eleven years younger than my sister, I was influenced by her.

When I was choosing which High School to attend, she insisted I attend one in NYC. She wanted me to experience the mind-expanding rhythm and excitement of theworld’s biggest city. Cross the river. Get out of Jersey City and its parochial thinking. And my father caved, and I attended Xavier HS.

My sister left NYC for Miami just before my first day of school in NYC. This left me flying solo in an environment that was completely foreign to me as a fourteen-year-old. I joined young men from all over NYC and North Jersey who were stepping into something bigger. This was a college-preparatory school that taught us to think, to become leaders. The Jesuits were really good at this.

I visited my sister in Miami for two summers. It gave me the opportunity for good-paying work. It got me away from my parents and friends. It gave me a vision for what life might be like elsewhere. After I graduated, I attended the University of Miami. My life was changing. It was getting bigger by the day.

I commuted to the U. I couldn’t afford to live on campus. I slept on a couch for four years at my sister’s one-bedroom apartment. I figured out how to keep working a full-time hospitality job on Miami Beach while going to school from morning until night on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I had the economic need and the energy to pull this off and complete my degree.

Another story of my sister’s influence guiding me to a bigger life, a life beyond my parents’ expectations.

While working, I met a general manager who ran a multi-store retail TV rental business in West Germany. We connected. He liked me and saw promise. He asked if I would like to intern at his corporate office in Düsseldorf, Germany.

I consulted with my sister, and she said, “You have to do this.”

In one week, I secured my passport and was on a flight to Germany at twenty years old. When I landed in Düsseldorf in the summer of 19, I quickly realized no one spoke English. The frustration of not being able to understand people or express myself put me to the test.

My three years of German in high school were all I had to lean on. Within a month, and with the help of a few beers to give me confidence, I began speaking German. By the end of the summer, I was fluent. And it was there, at the corporate office, that I was exposed to accounting. When I returned for my Junior year, I switched to Accounting as my major. This experience was indispensable, life-changing, life-expanding.

This all led me to a Miami-based CPA firm, where I met Richard Brock, who was selling software to CPAs. He too saw promise in me. We became partners in his software company,y which was located in Mobile, Alabama. We were selling first-time automation to CPA firms nationwide. We moved the company to Atlanta to have access to the airport. Within four years, we sold the company. This radically changed my financial position and professional ambitions.

I was now running the software division of a publicly traded software company. I was traveling nationally and internationally. My world was huge.

To think all this happened because of my sister’s influence and encouragement. And she was influenced and sustained by the social movement called feminism, whose message was “You are free to choose who you want to be and what you want to do.” It was clearly directed at women at the time, but look at the influence one woman who embraced this movement had on me!

So, yes, Gloria Steinem changed my life.

And now at seventy-three, I see how all this wrkhow thisthis puzzle of success fits together.

All the people I knew who were successful left their childhood homes and communities and moved to another city or country.

Why is this?

We grow up with parents who have expectations for our lives. The community we are raised in embraces and promotes these expectations. Finally, society supports these expectations through government policies, businesses, and organizations.

An example is the secretarial schools that flourished in the 1950s and early 60s. Women who joined the workforce needed to learn to type, take shorthand, and serve men in business. These expectations created systems to support them.

The only way to break free of these expectations is to leave the communities practicing them.

This is what I observed in my lifetime. This is the common thread I see among the successful people I know. Leaving the community you grew up in is not the only path to success. But I do think it is much easier to break free of parental and community expectations if you are no longer part of that community. This takes a lot of vision, commitment, and courage. Moving to a new city is far easier!

Hosea 11:1-2

“When Israel was a child, I loved him,

and I called my son out of Egypt.

But the more I called to him,

the farther he moved from me

offering sacrifices to the images of Baal

and burning incense to idols.

When I was a child, Jesus loved me. He protected me and brought me along. Then slowly I began to move away from Him.

This morning, these verses reminded me of my story. Here it is.

In my early teens, I stopped following Him. I associated Jesus with religion, rules, and rituals. This was the teaching of the Catholic Church.

They did not teach relationship. They taught me to be dutiful and repentant. I came away thinking I was a continual disappointment to Jesus. And as such, I walked away. I was a young man who was so morally corrupt that I could never please Him.

This lasted for 25 years from age 14-39.

I came to the end of myself. I could not deny Jesus’ existence, that God existed. After 25 years, I had no way back. All I knew was church, and I was not one of those people. But my guilt remained. I could not stop being this heavy-drinking, immoral man. I was succeeding in business until I wasn’t. And I believed I was failing at life as a husband and as a father.

What am I to do?

At the end of myself, I saw only two options:

1. Keep living the way I was living.

2. Do something else, but what?

The transition, however, to Option 2 happened one night when I came to grips with how disgusted I was by my drinking. I came to realize that my drinking resulted in removing my moral boundaries. I came to the conclusion:

If I thought it sober, I would do it loaded.

I wanted to get off this treadmill. I needed help.

I reached out to a neighbor for help. Jim Biesecker. He invited me to A.A. I didn’t know it then, but it was the beginning of my journey back to God/Jesus Christ.

After six months in AA and abstaining from drinking one day at a time, my brain fog was lifted. I now had a clear head. I asked myself: Who is this God who did this miracle in my life? He took the desire for alcohol away from me. He brought me to the ‘who is this God?’ question. He then brought people, His people, into my life with the answer.

It was Jesus. The same Jesus who loved me when I was a child. The God I walked away from beginning at age fourteen. The one who I now discovered still loves me.

Redemption and Renewal

He made me a new man. There was no other way that this could have happened.

Thank you, Jesus, for this rebirth, this second chance at life.

I shudder to think where my life would be today (if I were still alive) if I had not believed in Him and followed Him. If His Spirit was not in me, leading me and changing me from the inside out.

As bad as I screwed up my life, Jesus never gave up on me.

These verses came true for me. God never gave up on me.

When the business and the marriage are both in trouble at the same time, which one do you fix first?

Click to watch the rest of the conversation:

1. 1. As an entrepreneur, know what you know and know what you don’t know. And never confuse the two.

2. Review your priorities. Stand for something that will endure the test of time.

3. If you don’t seek forgiveness, the defiance will continue. Face the victim and ask for forgiveness.

4. There, but for the grace of God, go I. This is humility. This is truth.

5. The three greatest temptations of life: Pleasure. Popularity. Power. Build a great life and company by not falling victim to these.

6. You are most vulnerable to making a bad decision right after a great success. Been there. Done that.

Click to watch the rest of the conversation:

What’s the best feedback you ever got — the kind that believed in you and still told you the truth?

1. God does not give a vision to be rich. He gives a vision to serve others.

2. Write your goals on paper. Do it for you. Your inner voice wants to speak to you. Ask and listen.

3. Listen. It is the essence of learning. It is the heart of understanding. It is the soul of the successful entrepreneur.

4. You are here to serve. This is leadership.

5. Be generous in your meetings. A generous spirit uncovers profound truths the hasty miss.

6. With experience, you get smarter. You’ve always had your instincts. Now you have the confidence of experience.

What’s the excuse everyone in your industry accepts without ever checking the data behind it? Watch my full conversation with Gregg on Inflection Point.

Something different happened to me while reading a non-fiction book yesterday.

I had a flood of ideas. I’ve read hundreds of non-fiction books. Most of the time it is just more information. But this time was different. Way different. But why?

My son David helped me figure this out. I was reading for a reason. Here’s the story.

We were on our way home from the mountains after an early morning motorcycle ride. We were on the tail end of a five hour, two hundred and twenty-five mile joy ride. David and I use our riding time to talk. We have a helmet-to-helmet intercom system that lets us talk to each other. It is a great time to have a long, rambling conversation while enjoying our ride and the beautiful twisties of North Georgia.

David said, “I am reading a lot of business books these days. They are filled with good ideas. Some I can apply now, and some maybe later. The problem I’m having is that there is just too much information. I can’t process it all or remember it all.”

“That’s funny. I thought it was me. As I get older, I just assumed my short-term memory was leaving me because I have the same problem. I read the book and then don’t remember half of it,” I said.

David continued, “I don’t think the problem is age-related. We don’t realize how much information we are processing every day. We are in overload. But here is what I started doing to get through more material and retain what is important to me right now.”

Then he told me his plan for more effective non-fiction reading.

1. Read the jacket cover, which provides the book summary and describes the author. Also, read the table of contents.

2. Write down the questions you want this book to answer.

3. Read the preface or first chapter. You are looking for a more extended book summary here. This may prompt you to add to your questions.

4. Read the first two paragraphs and the last paragraph of each chapter with a pen in hand. Write notes, ideas, and any answers you receive to your questions.

5. When finished with the book, write a one-page summary. This includes the answers to your questions and your summary of the book. Keep this with the book.

6. Keep the book in full view to remind you of what you read and learned. Just seeing it will be a reminder of its content.

7. Discuss the book and what you learned with a friend. When you articulate what you’ve learned, it will better stick with you going forward.

After hearing this, I said, “This is brilliant. Now I know why the book I was reading this morning gave me so many ideas. I am looking for ideas for the presentations I’ll be giving in a month in Uganda. I realize now that everything I am reading, watching, or listening to is helping me answer the question, ‘What should I present?’ I am reading for a reason. I have a question I must answer.”

“Exactly,” he said. “This is how this method of reading non-fiction works for me, too.”

Then he said, “My only concern with this is, ‘What am I missing?’ by reading this way. Since I am reading to answer specific questions I have on the subject, am I missing something else I am supposed to learn?”

“You won’t miss what you’re supposed to learn if you make your concern one of your questions. What am I supposed to learn from this author that I’m not looking for?” I said.

The principle here is simple and time-tested. When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

(Later, while reflecting on this, I realized this is why school was so difficult for me. I was asked to read books I wasn’t interested in and read without purpose.)

Wherever I go, people are telling me about a great book they read on the subject we are discussing. If I am sufficiently interested in the topic, I write the book’s title in my notebook. Maybe I’ll order it, but I want to think about it first. Sometimes the person I’m meeting with is so excited about it, he’ll send me a copy. But most of those books sit in a stack on my reading table. This stack creates guilt.

Guilt no more

I learned something very important from this conversation with David. I don’t read the books because I’m not interested enough in the subject. I don’t have any questions I want answered. Or the questions don’t bother me enough to invest my time in getting them answered. That’s why the book is still sitting in my reading stack, unread. This student is not ready.

Are there any non-fiction books you would recommend?

If there are, this is what you are thinking about. This is your area of interest. This is what’s important to you at this time in your life.

For me, right now, I’m reading biographies. I want to read about lives well lived.

Here’s a two-minute video summary on how to read non-fiction books.

My answer is the same one I give every young father who comes to me worried about being a good dad. It sounds backwards until you see it work.

Watch the rest of this conversation.

I’m usually the one asking the questions.

This time, Gregg Hinthorn put me in the other chair on his show, Inflection Point — and he didn’t go easy. I didn’t want him to.

We talked about proposing to my wife after 30 days, and what 50 years of marriage actually taught me. The difference between loving correction and constant criticism. The business decisions that cost me. Why money never repaired a single relationship I damaged.

We talked about my recovery from alcohol and my faith in Jesus — the kind of change that only happens from the inside out.

Then he asked the question I hear more than any other: Is it too late to start something new?

I gave him my honest answer.

Watch my full conversation with Gregg on Inflection Point.

Fifty years later, we’re still here.

People ask how I can back a founder I’ve only known for a few months. This is where that comes from.

Full conversation drops Tuesday.

Last week, I shared the first ten lessons I would tell my twenty-something self. Here are the final ten, the ones that matter most in the end.

1. Don’t be satisfied with what you have. Want more. It has a big effect on what you’ll do to get those things.

2. To want more, you have to give more. It will keep you relevant. So be generous.

3. Don’t do anything stupid. Don’t add a bad chapter to your story.

4. Keep showing the same interest in your wife that you had when you first met her.

5. Be nice to people. You are a role model and influence others whether you know it or not. What you say sticks with people. So be kind, not just insightful.

6. Spend time with your kids and, in the future, grandchildren. They want you around, and they want you to help them. But be nice. Be understanding.

7. Family is all you’ll have left in the end. Think about what you can do today to show you know this to be true.

8. God will use you, but you have to trust him and not question him. Step out and be bigger for God. He’s thinking in terms of transformation, and you are thinking in terms of incremental change.

9. Think positive. Think about what you can do. Never focus on why you can’t do it.

10. Dream. Dream of the future and not the past. You can’t change what has happened, but you can live what is to be. Anything is possible. Are you thinking about possibilities and potential?

You have inspired a list of things I wish I had known when I was in my twenties. When I was young, I had energy and drive. Now I have experience and wisdom. So what advice would I give my twenty-something self? Here are my top 20 lessons learned.

1. Don’t drink and don’t smoke. Drunk people are embarrassing and pathetic. They are boring, not interesting.

2. Work out regularly and eat right. Stay fit so I don’t have to take care of you.

3. As you go through life, act your age, but don’t think your age. There is nothing worse than an old guy who acts like he’s forty.

4. Start riding motorcycles. Stay interesting by getting out of the house and taking a risk.

5. You still have a lot to learn, so keep learning. Get better at what you do. My father used to make fun of his cousin. In Italian, he would say, “Pete, the-know-it-all.” He laughed at him because no one knows it all. Stay hungry to learn.

6. Travel. Meet new people. Speak. Write. See how others live. Test the truth by sharing the truth.

7. Allow yourself to be bad at something new. Fail. It’s okay. Force yourself to do the things you know you want to do but are afraid to try. This will make you less boring.

8. You can take advantage of business opportunities that come your way. Shutting down is a cop out. They’ll make you a better businessman. Don’t waste them.

9. Make friendship a priority, and seek out differences. Different ages, faiths, races, and nationalities. This is the richness of life.

10. Be willing to start a new career. Crazy, right?

1. A great entrepreneur is relatively disciplined but not patient. Drive outweighs discipline.

2. Before investing, angels want the big return. After investing, angels want risk mitigation. It’s human nature.

3. Sustainability is always a nonprofit’s number one challenge.

4. Most of the leads we get come from proactive efforts we made to generate them. “If we build it, they will come” is a faulty principle.

5. People don’t fund ideas. They fund businesses.

6. When a prospective investor raises a concern about you or your business, what you say matters not. It will always be there, even if he funds the deal. Can you live with that?

7. You know you got it and have to do it when you come to this conclusion: What it can be is more important than the fear of me failing.

“The guy is an orchid,” John blurted out.

John Teira was a 30-year-retired IBMer who was working for me. He was hired to introduce our professional services company to IBM lab directors nationwide. He was an intelligent and experienced senior sales executive who knew how to talk to IBMers.

John was in the last season of his business career. He didn’t want anybody reporting to him. He just wanted to sell, make money, and add to his retirement account.

I was President of Sterling Software Professional Services worldwide, a division of a publicly traded company. I had an apartment in NYC, my HQ, with branches throughout the US and Western Europe. I was in my mid-thirties and was a little over my head.

The big problem was that I was a product guy running a services organization. And this was my first stint at running a company with remote offices across multiple cultures.

I needed coaching.

I needed a consigliere.

John Teira was the man.

I treasured the time we spent together while on the road and over dinners. John lived in New Jersey but worked out of the NYC HQ office. The more I got to know John, the more I trusted him. The more I trusted him, the more I opened up to him about strategy, people, and my insecurities. In short, he became my mentor even though he worked for me.

His experience was invaluable in developing sales strategies, but his wisdom and understanding of people helped me succeed in running this division.

A couple of stories come to mind.

I had a NYC branch manager who was close to hitting his numbers but was never there. In trying to nail this guy down, I always came away empty-handed. But the killer was this. I was a busy exec, and he was taking too much of my time. A likable guy who communicated well, but was needy and lacked the confidence to make decisions.

While talking to John about my frustrations with this branch manager, John blurted out, “The guy is an orchid.”

“A what?

“An orchid.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

An orchid is a beautiful flower that is almost impossible to keep healthy. An orchid requires just the right sunlight, the right humidity, the right potting, and just the right amount of water to flourish.

“Your NYC branch manager is an Orchid.”

From that moment on, I was always on the lookout for orchids. If I happen to hire one or inherit a direct report like this, I will move quickly. I never had time for an orchid for the rest of my business career, including as an angel investor.

Another John story.

I had an opportunity to become the CEO of US Operations for an even larger public Professional Services company. A requirement for the job opportunity was moving to Los Angeles. I wanted the job, but I felt this was the wrong time for Kathy and me to move. Our kids were thriving in our Atlanta community. In addition, I was on the road most of the time, and the move to LA was not going to change that part of the job.

I talked to John about this opportunity. He knew me and knew I was ambitious. I wanted this. But he could feel my dilemma.

We talked about this for a couple of hours over dinner in NYC.

After dinner, he drove me to my hotel, The Hyatt at Grand Central. We pulled up to the roundabout at the front entrance. I thanked John for the ride and the dinner conversation. As I shut the door to his car, he rolled down the window, called me back, and said, “One more thing to think about.”

I tossed and turned all night thinking about this.

Within a year, I realized that my family was more important to me than becoming a career executive. I left my corporate career and decided to start a business in Atlanta. Whatever I started would be focused only on Atlanta. I would not travel. I was determined to stay home, focus on my family, and build a business that honored those constraints.

Thanks, John, for sharing your life’s wisdom with me when I was a 37-year-old executive.

Mentors are so valuable.

I am seventy-three now, and I still look for older mentors. They are harder to find in this season of life, and sadly, the ones I’ve found keep leaving me. But I never forget their wisdom. It shapes me long after they are gone.

“What’s your bottom?”

That’s the question people in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) always talk about. They say things like, “When my car was repossessed because I forgot to park inside the warehouse where I was sleeping, that was my bottom,” or, “When my wife asked me to leave and wouldn’t allow me to see the kids, and the kids were relieved she did it, that was my bottom.” The lowest bottom is death.

I had what’s called a high bottom.

I loved to work. It was a great way to bury issues in my life I didn’t want to think about, never mind deal with. But when I left my corporate job, I found myself with time on my hands. Time to reflect on my day-to-day behavior and the drivers behind it. I’m not talking about healthy behaviors, but destructive behaviors driven by guilt and resentment. Work helped me avoid this self-reflection, but when I didn’t have work, the destructive behaviors came into focus.

Here’s my story

Kathy and I had dinner and our usual bottle of wine. She drank a glass, and I drank the rest of the bottle. She left to clean up, and I grabbed a beer and sat down to watch a Braves game. I was on my third beer when it hit me. “You’ve become your father.” I loved my dad. He was a passionate romantic. He loved people and loved life. He was well-read for a man with only a high school education and loved to talk on any subject. He was fascinated with people, and people loved him.

Except when he drank.

After a few drinks, he turned unpredictable. As his son, I didn’t know if he would love me or verbally attack me. I watched him do it with my sister for years. Janet, the firstborn, is 11 years older than I am. She took his verbal abuse for years, long before I showed up. She stayed his primary target long after my arrival.

I realized I’d become my father.

I was sitting alone in the family room. Kathy was in the master bedroom with the door closed. As my eyes swept up and around to the second floor of our house, I saw Julia, my oldest, in her room with her door closed. Lisa was in her room with her door closed. David was in his room with his door closed. No one wanted to be with me because they didn’t trust me. They knew I was drinking again. At that moment, a thought hit me, “If you keep drinking like this every night, you will be alone the rest of your life. You will lose Kathy and the kids and everything else you treasure.”

This thought sent a chill down my spine.

I decided I needed to do something. For the past few years, I have been thinking about my friend and former neighbor, Jim. He was 15 years older than me. He was married to a wonderful lady for life, had four kids, was a regional manager for a printing company, and was a very social guy. Normal, right? One day, I heard Jim was in rehab for his drinking problem. That scared the heck out of me because even back then, with a good job and great family, I knew I had a drinking problem, too.

I was controlling it, I told myself.

Even though I hadn’t talked to Jim in a couple of years, I called him the next day. He was defensive at first, thinking I was trying to sell him something. But then I said, “I want to talk to you about drinking. I remember you went to rehab.” He replied without hesitation, “Are you free for lunch today?” Jim and I sat at a table for two by the window. I remember it like it was yesterday. He told me some of his story. “As a regional manager, I looked for opportunities to go to liquid lunches with customers. When I couldn’t find a customer for lunch, I would eat at my desk and grab a few beers from my personal office refrigerator.” Then he asked me, “You know where this goes?”

I shook my head from side to side.

He said, “I would wake up, get dressed, and go downstairs for breakfast. I would pop open a 16 oz. Budweiser and drink it down in three sips. Then I would grab another one for the drive to the office.”As he told me this story, I was thinking to myself, “Could that ever be me?” I was a night drinker. I rarely drank during the day, except on Saturdays and Sundays, or when the “let’s go to a late lunch with the office and blow off some steam” opportunity presented itself. I knew this: when I drank, I drank too much. I couldn’t help myself.

He said, “Come with me to an AA meeting tonight.”

I was stunned. AA? Me? He saw the panic in my eyes and said, “Don’t worry. It’s not a bunch of smelly drunks in dirty raincoats there. It is filled with people just like you and me.” I agreed to go. This was during my crazy and mostly unproductive networking days, so when I showed up, I was dressed in a suit and tie. I was not going to look like a drunk. I saw Jim and latched on to him. He was my lifeline in this strange environment. I was relieved to see well over fifty people there. I asked if we could sit in the back so I wouldn’t be recognized. I don’t remember most of the meeting, but the end changed my life. What happened never happened again to anyone in the hundreds of meetings I later attended.

AA meetings all end the same way.

They ask, “Is there anyone here who wants to stop drinking one day at a time?” Sometimes people come forward and take the white poker chip. This white chip represents the international sign of surrender. After that, colored chips are offered to recognize 30, 90, 180, and 360 days of sobriety. Then the meeting leader concludes the meeting by having everyone stand and hold hands. We say the Lord’s Prayer together and then shake our joined hands up and down while saying, “It works if you work it.” When everyone stood up in my first meeting, a house painter jumped to the front of the room.

He said, “Everyone, sit down!”

He then stared at me as I sat, head down, in the back of the room. He said, “If you want to stop drinking one day at a time, you need to commit to doing two things. First, come up here and take this white chip and stop drinking one day at a time. Second, when you wake up in the morning, drop to your knees and ask God to keep you sober that day. Just before you go to bed, drop to your knees again and thank God for keeping you sober.”

I don’t remember what happened.

It was almost like an out-of-body experience. The next thing I knew, I had a white chip in my hand. That man died two years later from colon cancer at the age of 42. But he changed my life. I didn’t know him, and he didn’t know me. I can’t even recall his name. But he cared enough to challenge me so I could have what he had. A life without alcohol. A real life. What he didn’t know was that he permitted me to do the two things I wanted most in life. He permitted me not to drink. And he permitted me to talk to God. The God I had stiff-armed since I was 18.

I spend too much time telling people who they should be and far too little time celebrating who they are.

I actually made one of my company’s CEO cry.

It was the most successful investment I ever made in my angel investing career.

The CEO had grown the company from $4mm in revenue to $16mm.

He missed his numbers about halfway through the $16mm fiscal year. I was then the Chairman of the Board of Directors and the largest investor. I called the CEO and asked for a meeting. A meeting that I wanted sooner rather than later.

I started the meeting by telling him how disappointed I was that he was missing his numbers. I then recounted why I think he was missing his numbers. I went through his lack of urgency with his direct reports, his lack of commitment to this important goal, his lack of timely action in replacing the non-performers, and, finally, his seeming calmness in the midst of this crisis.

As I went on and on about his shortcomings, he began to cry. Not big, heaping tears where it is difficult to catch your breath. These were tears of brokenness. But being a good Chairman, I ignored his tears and finished what I believed needed to be said. I wasn’t there to show empathy or be put off by an emotional showing. I was there to address the missed numbers and his inaction, which I saw as the culprit.

I left that meeting asking myself, “Could I have handled that meeting differently?”

The next day, the CEO called me and asked if he could come to my office.

In that meeting, he asked me if I wanted him to resign.

I proceeded to tell him all he had accomplished, how he had grown the company’s revenue over the last few years, and how he had built an amazing management team. How he and his team designed practices and processes to increase efficiency and reduce future financial liabilities, and how the customer base was a great source of references.

He listened, then said, “Why don’t you ever talk like this to me?”

I said, “I don’t know. I guess I have an eye that only sees what is wrong, and then I feel like I have to talk about it first.”

He said, “What you said in the last meeting drove me to the floor of my office. What you said today lifted me and motivated me to even greater achievements.”

And then he said this. I will never forget these words.

“You give compliments with a teaspoon. You should think about giving compliments with a ladle instead.”

This is what I want people to do with me, too.

But this is not what happens. I am also criticized. Told by others what is wrong with what I said or did. I am rarely told what I am doing right, what I accomplished, or what they appreciate about me.

So my excuse for my bad behavior is, “I can’t give what I don’t have.”

This is a bad, bad excuse. Because more people than not do compliment me. But I don’t receive it.

I treat myself like I treat others.

This became clear to me recently at breakfast with the CEO of a $1 billion company. I told him how much I admire him. I listed his characteristics and his achievements that impressed me. I then double down on speaking to the man: he is in Christ, and what a fortunate company to have him lead it.

He listened to me and said, “Thanks for saying that, but if you only knew.”

I called him out on his reaction. I said, “Why do we do this to ourselves?”

That is not how God talks to us. God made us in His image, and He loves us. Why do we talk to ourselves harshly? Why are we surrounded by people who judge us? People who tell us we are not enough. What is wrong with us?

We discussed these questions for a few minutes, then moved on to something else. It appeared to me that this topic made him uncomfortable.

And it was this breakfast that reminded me that over twenty years ago, I made that great manager who worked for me cry. The last time I remembered this story was two months ago when I attended that man’s funeral.

I was sitting in his funeral at his church and thought, “If I were asked to speak on this man’s life, what would I say?”

I would say, “I’m sorry for that day. I am sorry for what I said. Thanks for forgiving me. Thanks for your advice. You were a great friend over the last twenty years. You changed my life with your advice. I’ll never forget it.”

Don’t give compliments with a teaspoon. Use a ladle.

10. Secret to unimaginable success: Do what you say you are going to do. That’s it! Really. That. Is. It.

9. If, as the employee of a startup, you have the same relationship with the founder that you did the day the company started, then the company is not growing.

8. You can’t be in it just for yourself. If you are in it for others, they will be in it for you.

7. If you have a vision, share it. This is the first step to conviction on the road to success.

6. The military gives medals to people who sacrifice for others. In business, we give bonuses to people who sacrifice for us.

5. Review your priorities. Stand for something that will endure the test of time.

4. God put his spirit in us: a God of abundance and dreams without constraints. Seek God with all your heart, and you will find Him and the dreams he has for you.

3. Value is narrow and not wide. Fail wide, and you are dead. Fail narrow and live another day.

2. To be a craftsman requires thought. Thought requires quiet. Lose the quiet, and a craftsman withers away.

1. What makes for a great company? A buying market and great people serving that market. A simple success formula is not readily found.

“I came to Christ because of you,” I told my youngest son.

“Me?” he asked innocently.

My youngest son is thirty-two this year. Thirty-three years ago, on a Saturday morning, Kathy came out of our bathroom and sat next to me as I was waking up. When I turned to look at her, I saw she was in tears.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her.

“I’m pregnant.”

I started crying too. We cried together.

I was thirty-nine years old and out of work for the first time in my life. Before leaving my last gig as the COO of the US operations for a UK public company, my work life was always up, up, up—a partner in a successful software company, which we sold when I was twenty-eight. I got a chunk of money and the beginning of an exciting corporate career running businesses.

And then it was all gone one day. One breakfast meeting with my boss. I walked out of that meeting unemployed. Clueless. Without a job title to hide behind. No prospects. No network in Atlanta. No purpose. I went from master of the universe to being knocked to the ground after hearing the words, “Maybe you should move on?” To what I thought.

This, on top of hating the roady executive life. Nothing good happens on the road. It is filled with lonely people trying to build relationships, only to fail again and again. Our relationships, our real relationships, are at home. I nursed this wound of loneliness with first-class travel and five-star hotels.

Mind you, I was only in those hotel rooms for six hours a night. Then off to breakfast, a meeting, and a flight to another city. I was building a business, setting goals I didn’t care about, making great money, and building my career so I could do it again for another boss yet to be discovered.

But I stayed the course with the help of alcohol. It shut off the anxiousness generated from the questions I was asking myself. I didn’t want to pursue these answers. I wanted to love what I was doing. The truth was, I didn’t. So I drank at night to quench the guilt and pursued activities to make me forget who I was afraid to be.

My life at home was with a wife, two little girls, and a four-year-old son. We had a beautiful home, two Mercedes in the garage, and three private school tuitions. I’d wake up in the morning when unemployed and feel like my kids looked at me like I shouldn’t be there.

“Don’t you work? Shouldn’t you be traveling? Why are you here?” These were the questions I saw on their faces. Their life at home was no longer my life. What happened? And now we were having a baby.

The prospect of a new baby hit me hard. It was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. I had no plan and no opportunities to pursue. I had nowhere to go. I started the search process thinking I was the most employable CEO/COO in Atlanta tech. Within a few months, after zero interest and then a couple of false starts, I lost my confidence, all of it.

I hit bottom.

But the family was growing.

Then three things happened in succession.

1. I joined AA - no more addiction!

2. I came to know Jesus as my Savior and Lord - I was no longer in charge of my life!

3. I fell in love with the Word of God, the Bible - I had the playbook for right living!

I was born again, filled with the spirit, and following Jesus.

Within six months, through the craziest set of circumstances, I started a new business and a new career. I became a full-time angel investor and the creator of the first-of-its-kind IT services incubator. And it worked. It all worked really well.

Over the next few years, the old cowboy song played backward for me. I got my dog back, my truck back, my wife back, my kids back, and meaningful work back. Yes. Jesus brought all back and then some.

Thirty-two years after my son’s birth, here is what happened.

Kathy and I will celebrate our forty-eighth anniversary in May.

My daughters are married to two fine men. They have six of our grandchildren between them.

My then-four-year-old son is now married and has started a worldwide business out of London, England. He has a beautiful little girl, who is our first Paparelli grandchild.

And that surprise baby, the one who was the straw that broke the camel’s back. He is a successful SaaS sales representative and is building a great career. He is still looking for that one special woman so he can start a family. We are praying for her.

It is amazing how God works. I had to hit bottom to be open to asking for his help. And you know what? He was right there, waiting to be asked.

I came to realize a truth in life. It came to me by helping others who hit bottom. And the truth is this. There is always hope, always. And here is why: Jesus hangs out at the end of our rope. He is always there to catch us. All we have to do is ask.