Jeff, Frank, and I took a charter flight to Tennessee. We presented our beautiful marketing plan to the distributor, helping secure over $1 million dollars in inventory financing for our vodka company. Next, we entertained a local mortgage company to land $750K in equity financing.<\/p>\n
Our only problem, we thought; we were low on cash. No problem. I was a big man. I used my personal money, without letting my wife know, to help keep the lights on\u00a0until the big dollars came in. I was drinking the coolaid and maybe a few adult beverages. We had a great time chasing the dream and going for the big time.<\/p>\n
After having delays with the Ukrainian producer and the mortgage company going out of business, cracks started forming in my idol. Thinking back, it was a little strange to have a mortgage company even entertain financing our\u00a0struggling drunken enterprise.<\/p>\n
So many years of work and money vanished. I blamed God for taking away my idol, MONEY! I cried. I yelled. The most surprising thing I’ve learned over the years; God is ever present when we are in the furnace. He has shown His presence and love more during the trials than any other time, regardless of my boorish behavior.<\/p>\n
So, what’s next? My family is collateral damage and now I need a new job.<\/p>\n
How do I model good behavior when I’m such a poor example?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Of course it seems easier to learn from others’ failures; however, sometimes we need to be refined in the furnace of our own failures before we understand the pain we’ve cause ourselves and others.<\/p>\n
Change your focus<\/h3>\n
The same can be said of our bodies. Sometimes it takes a scare at the doctor’s office, ‘you have cancer’, or ‘you have diabetes’, before we are determined to make healthy choices.<\/p>\n
We change our focus<\/strong>. Focusing on the right things over time will cause growth.<\/p>\n
As a father, that focus is on investing more time<\/strong> in my children and wife<\/strong> and letting them know they are valued.<\/p>\n
It can be overwhelming to make a radical change. However, radical results can occur by making<\/strong>\u00a0small changes over time<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
Challenge: Spend 10 quality minutes a day with your children. Ideas: a walk, fishing, basketball, take a drive to the store, take a seat in the backyard to talk. If you don’t see them, write them a letter or spend the same amount of time praying for them.<\/p>\n
Extra Challenge: If you are already spending a lot of quality time with your children, write them a handwritten note. Let them know you value them.<\/p>\n
P.S. Stay tuned next week when we feature a former Black Panther\u00a0and his upbringing and how he made a radical change.<\/p>\n
John (a student of fatherhood)<\/p>\n
Subscribe<\/a> to our email list<\/a> if you haven’t already.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Failures Jeff, Frank, and I took a charter flight to Tennessee. We presented our beautiful marketing plan to the distributor, helping secure over $1 million dollars in inventory financing for our vodka company. Next, we entertained a local mortgage company to land $750K in equity financing. Our only problem, we thought; we were low on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1256,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,67],"tags":[141,147],"class_list":["post-405353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-abiding","category-role","tag-absent","tag-failure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/af2.musiimes.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/af2.musiimes.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/af2.musiimes.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/af2.musiimes.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/af2.musiimes.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/af2.musiimes.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/af2.musiimes.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/af2.musiimes.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/af2.musiimes.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/af2.musiimes.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}