by Robert Mazzucchelli | Mar 24, 2017 | Lessons From The Passionist
(This is Installment #4 of Lessons From The Passionist: How To Turn Passion Into Purpose To Create Greater Meaning and Joy in Your Life. This week, I continue to tell the story of my passion guided journey from a brief career as a fledgling pro tennis player to a marketing industry pioneer and leader. I hope you enjoy, and please continue to send your comments and stories. I love the feedback and hearing from all of you.)
Chapter 1 (continued) – A Journey, Not a Destination: My Personal Passion Journey
Steven Roberts is a gritty entrepreneur who literally throws himself into everything he does until he achieves his goal. He was always creating some kind of business as a kid, and even made enough money stringing tennis racquets at sixteen to buy himself his first car, a convertible MG. Playing tennis, he would often dive for balls and come off the court bleeding. It was a badge of honor for Steven, a sign that he put out the required effort to win or die trying. He still plays the same way.
I thought Steven would be the ideal business partner for a pioneering marketing company, so I called him (he was living in California at the time, and I was in Northern Virginia, near Washington, DC, one of the hubs of the early sports marketing industry) and shared my ideas. I told him that I was considering taking a sports marketing job, but was hesitant because I felt strongly that there was an opportunity to create a company to change the way sports marketing was done, to make it more strategic and marketing driven. “Why not us,” I said, “Let’s create our own company.” We also wanted to get rich, so working for someone else, and making them rich, didn’t seem like the right path. As often happens with close friends, he was thinking similar thoughts, and had already created a company that was doing some tennis related promotions. We were young and had little to lose by launching our own business rather than working for someone else, so after a few hours of discussion, we decided to become partners and go for it.
Two months after that phone conversation, I convinced Steven to move from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., where we could be closer to the center of the industry, and closer to New York City, where many of the headquarters of our potential clients were located. Within a week of his arrival in D.C., Pinnacle Promotions was born. Founded by two twenty-somethings with a passion to make a difference, street smarts, newly minted college degrees (neither in marketing), some still open wounds form being brutally spit out by the pro tennis tour and not much else (we didn’t have two pennies between us when we started), Pinnacle Promotions set out to make its mark on the fast-growing sports and event marketing industry. Without a doubt, a high degree of passion and persistence would be required to make this venture successful.
Steven and I developed a strategic framework for how we thought companies should approach sports and event sponsorships. Today, the practice is called sponsorship activation and experiential marketing, and many companies do it intelligently with great results. But in 1987, few brands executed strategically effective sponsorship programs, or even thought a strategy was needed to optimize their sponsorship investments. Sponsors were still busy shaking hands and taking photos with celebrities in the VIP tents, and calling it marketing. We knew this was an unsustainable model, and that boards and investors would eventually start to demand more accountability from sponsorships.
A good example of scant accountability was Team Nabisco. For those of you unfamiliar with Team Nabisco, it was the pet project in 1987 of Nabisco CEO, F. Ross Johnson. Johnson assembled a private team of hall-of-fame athletes that included Bobby Orr, O.J. Simpson, Frank Gifford, Don Meredith, and other sports luminaries. He spent millions of Nabisco’s dollars flying these former superstars around the country on the corporate fleet of jets to play golf with him and, presumable, his customers. Google it or read Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco – it was the biggest sports marketing related boondoggle ever dreamed up. Pinnacle Promotions mission was to prevent these types of crazy deals from happening. It was also our passion.
Night and day, I set out to learn everything I could about advertising and marketing, trying to figure out how sponsorship really fit into the picture to help build brands. I must have read hundreds of books on the subject in the first year we were in business. I needed to make sure I understood what our prospective clients, mostly brand managers then, were talking about, especially when they used industry jargon. Clients would often use terms and acronyms we’d never heard before in meetings, and Steven and I would just nod, not knowing what the hell they were talking about. After the meeting, I would run off to the library (no Internet back then) to figure out what they had said and why it was important. Sometimes the acronyms were only internal abbreviations that they failed to explain, and assumed we understood (not sure why they would have assumed that, but they never explained them unless we asked). We were challenged and learning every day.
We had no fear. We were complete novices when we started the company, and we made lots of mistakes in the beginning, both strategically and in program execution. While preparing for our second big event, a beach volleyball tournament for Coors Light, we stupidly printed the posters before getting the signed contract back from the event venue in Ocean City, MD. They had told us we had a deal, and we believed them. The day we showed up to pick up the contract and begin event preparations, we learned that the owner had changed his mind about hosting our event. They didn’t bother to call us and let us know. I’ll never forget the shocked look on Steven’s face as he was interrupted while trying to reason with owner, saying we had already printed the posters as he held one up for emphasis. Lenny Berger, owner of the hotel, just blurted out at Steven, “Get out of my office!” And we did. We left with our tails between our legs wondering what we were going to do to solve this problem.
The event was only a few weeks away and we had already been paid half of our fee by the client. We had dinner planned with him that night to give a progress report on the event. What were we going to do? Definitely not panic. At dinner, we calmly told him that we had lost our venue for the event. “But,” I said. “It’s no problem. We’ll have a new one by the end of day tomorrow.” For reasons I still can’t explain (but really appreciate now, because we would have been out of business that day if he didn’t), he gave us twenty-four hours to fix the problem. Maybe he sensed our passion and unwillingness to fail. Who knows?
We weren’t planning to spend the night in Ocean City. Steven and I didn’t have money for a hotel, so I slept on the beach and Steven slept in his red VW Scirocco with his girlfriend (now wife), Maryam. We didn’t sleep much, and I was jolted awake at dawn by the noise of a truck about to dump a load of garbage on me in the sand crater I thought would be good shelter for the night (it turned out to be an empty garbage pit). I’ll never forget having to jump out of the way before getting tons of garbage dumped on me. Entrepreneurship is not always as glamorous as it seems. We showered at an outdoor pool shower at the Holiday Inn, put on our suits and hit the streets, going up and down the beach trying to find a hotel that would host our volleyball event. As I remember, we were never really worried about finding a new venue, we were just determined to get it done. By the end of the day, we had signed a deal with The Carousel Hotel & Resort. Crisis averted. That would be the first of many near disasters we would face during our early years in business.
We were so driven to succeed at building our company, and so broke when we started, that we even agreed to lease office space with no heat and no air conditioning for our first year. The space was over a dry cleaners’ shop in Old Town Alexandria, VA. We paid $300 a month rent and had to paint the place and get new carpets before we could use it. It was a funny scene, Steven and I working in that office. In the winter, our hands often got too cold for us to type and we would huddle at our desks in coats and scarves, our breath visible as we spoke. In the summer, we would strip down to our underwear, and sweat would drip onto our desks and our work, and our heads would stick to the phone. Yes, making this business work required a high degree of passion to help us the through hardships and missteps. In retrospect, those were some of the most enjoyable and satisfying moments of my professional life, fighting battle-by-battle and surviving to fight another day.
After a roller-coaster start and too many near-bankruptcy moments (nine in the first three years), Pinnacle Promotions survived and eventually succeeded in its mission to raise the strategic bar for its sports and event sponsorship clients, and our efforts were rewarded by loyal and appreciative clients who then offered us other, non-sponsorship related, marketing work. This allowed us to expand our scope of services, and become what is now called an integrated marketing agency. Many of our initial client contacts came from our tennis experiences and from our ability to play tennis with prospective clients as part of the sales pitch process (it seems that many club players were anxious to hit a few balls with some ex-pros, even if we weren’t household names). But eventually, Pinnacle Promotions began to grow for different reasons. Mainly, we got better at creating marketing programs that worked, and new business started coming in because we were good. The company that was created out of passion and belief had grown into a legitimate business that helped big brands solve tricky marketing problems.
My transition from tennis player to expert marketing practitioner was a multi-year journey. Passion was the bridge from tennis to marketing. Six years after creating Pinnacle Promotions, we sold it. Steven moved back to California and continued a successful career in marketing and media. I followed my passion for marketing and was hired by global advertising giant Bates Worldwide (then owned by Saatchi & Saatchi Holdings, one of the largest advertising holding companies in the world in 1993). Off to NYC I went to make my name on Madison Avenue, where I would eventually work in my favorite building in the world, The Chrysler Building.
My first job at Bates was in their newly formed sales promotion company, BSB Dryden & Petisi. Bob Petisi, the guy who found and recruited me to Bates, and Tom Dryden were sales promotion veterans who had sold their small agency to Bates in an effort to provide services to Bates’ large client base. They were ten years older than me. Tom was a copywriter and drove the creative product for the agency. Bob was an expert schmoozer, a quintessential people person who made sure the clients were happy and stayed at the agency. They were a good team and would give me an excellent opportunity to learn and improve my skills.
In September of 1993, I became an account director at BSB Dryden & Petisi, and for four months ran the work for Miller Genuine Draft, RC Cola, Perrier, The New York Racing Association (which comprised the horse tracks Belmont, Aqueduct and Saratoga) and CBS, along with chasing new business. I was enjoying the job immensely, shuttling between our offices in Westport, CT and New York City on Metro North Railroad. I worked closely with Bob and Tom, but also with our counterparts at Bates in NYC with whom I shared a few clients. Miller Genuine Draft was one of Bates largest clients, so I worked closely with the account team on the advertising side, and coordinated our promotional work with their campaigns. Since the CEO of Bates USA, Frank Assumma, had come from the Miller account and had actually approved my hiring, I also had a good relationship with the most senior managers of the company. I felt at that time that I was in the game, a “Mad Man” , and I loved it.
1993 was also the year my daughter, Ariana, was born. If you want to ignite passion in your life, become a parent. Nothing anyone could have told me would have prepared me for being a father. I never imagined how much love I could have for a person or how much fun it could be to just watch a baby grow. The birth of my daughter was far and away the greatest moment of my life. No passion will ever compare to the passion I have for being Ariana’s dad (my daughter is in her twenties now and busy exploring her own passions in life). I enjoyed every aspect of being a father when she was young. Changing diapers. No problem. Waking up early (fortunately, Ariana liked to sleep, so I didn’t lose too many nights sleep). No problem. Birthday parties. Sports practices. You name it. I wanted to experience everything with her. I was happy to do it all and wanted to spend as much time being a dad as I could, especially since my work and travel schedule kept me away often. Even now, as she gets older, and is beginning her own career, I still feel my day is incomplete if I don’t talk to her.
A year after joining BSB Dryden & Petisi, Bob and Tom confided in me that they were having second thoughts about their deal with Bates. They did not think the costs of being part of the global advertising giant were worth the benefits they were getting. In short, they felt they were spending too much money on needless Bates corporate overhead expenses, and that it negatively effected how much they could pay themselves. They were going to leave Bates.
I, on the other hand, loved being at Bates. It wasn’t about the money for me, I loved being around the advertising business. I loved the creativity. I loved the global nature of the company (Bates had 112 offices around the world). At this stage in my career, I saw much more upside being at Bates, and Saatchi & Saatchi Holdings, than BSB Dryden & Petisi. I did not want BSB Dryden & Petisi to separate from Bates because I would likely end up going with them. So, I did what any good entrepreneur would do. I created an opportunity and a win-win-win deal.
I went to Bob and Tom and told them I had a solution to their problem with Bates. I would go to Frank Assumma and Art D’Angelo, the Bates CFO, and suggest that I create a new promotion company in the New York City office serving a few key clients, Miller Genuine Draft, CBS and Perrier. Bob and Tom would be released from their contracts, and take some of the BSB Dryden & Petisi clients that were not also Bates clients and start a new agency on their own. Everyone would win and get what they wanted. I would get to stay at Bates. Bates would get a promotion capability to service its advertising clients. And Bob and Tom were free from the deal they no longer wanted. I pitched the idea to the Bates executives and they agreed. In January of 1994, I would become President of the newly formed Bates Promotion Group. Bob and Tom would go on their merry way. Everyone was happy.
I arrived at The Chrysler Building for my first official day of my new job and walked through the incredible art deco marble lobby toward the elevators. I looked around and marveled at the beauty of the building. I’m not sure I had dreamt of working in this building specifically, but from where I started in an office over a dry cleaner with no heat and air conditioning, this would have been an ambitious dream for sure. Yet here I was. As I approached the unique, wood-veneered and art-deco metal designed elevator doors, I stopped to look at the building directory (not electronic then, but white plastic letters pressed into a black background). It was framed by artfully crafted metal replica of the building’s famous spire. As I scanned the company names, I saw Bates Promotion Group on the seventeenth floor. Under the company name, it said “Robert Mazzucchelli, President”. I was thirty-two, my name was on the directory in the lobby of The Chrysler Building as president of a major division of one of the largest advertising agencies ever created, an agency famous for iconic campaigns for Coca Cola and Miller Lite Beer. I had made it to the big time. Maybe not in tennis, but in advertising.
I was on quite a ride. Following my passions had already brought me through a remarkable journey, from the smallest state in the U.S. to a career as a professional tennis player; from owning my own small marketing company to landing a job as president of a major division of one of the biggest global advertising agencies in the world. All just eight years after graduating from college. What awesome power passion has to transform our lives.
I stayed at Bates for about six years, enjoying every minute of working with some of the smartest and craziest people I had ever met. Mad Men (and women) for sure. I didn’t enjoy the bureaucracy and politics of such a big company, but the people and the work made up for the headaches. While at Bates, I helped start a global marketing agency called 141 Worldwide and traveled the world to open new offices and meet with clients in cities I’d heard about, but never imagined I would visit so frequently. I went to Bogota, Warsaw, Tokyo, Oslo, Hamburg, Paris, London, Lima, Buenos Aires, and dozens of cities. This frequent travel, while hard on my personal life at times, ultimately fueled my lifelong passion for travel, meeting new people from different cultures and trying different cuisines.
By the ripe old age of thirty-eight, following my passions had already yielded two careers, a few trips around the world and enough adventures to last several lifetimes. What would be next?
I took some time off after leaving Bates to pursue another passion, one I shared with my Dad until his death: golf. My golfing experiences with my father are some of the best memories of my life. He was a golfing fanatic who, when diagnosed with cancer in 1991, said to me while considering his treatment options, “I just want to be able to play golf.” He loved golf that much and survived to play countless more rounds for twenty years after beating his cancer.
One of the most memorable rounds of golf I played with my dad was during the summer of 1984. I was teaching tennis at The Beacon Hill Country Club in Atlantic Highlands, NJ, while preparing for my last year of college. I was miserable in New Jersey. I was lonely, hated teaching spoiled little kids and housewives all day and was anxious about getting my tennis game back into shape for my senior year. The coach had recruited several new hotshots, and the competition to make it into the starting singles line-up was getting intense. Anyway, my parents came to New Jersey to cheer me up, and I took my dad out for a round of golf at my club.
When we started our round, it was a beautiful summer day. The sun was shining, the fairways looked lush and green, and there was a light breeze making the temperature and the playing conditions perfect. We were both playing well that day, and laughing a lot as usual as we approached the 17th tee. We both hit pretty good tee shots that left us within striking distance of the green, which we both reached on our second shot. As we drove up to the green, it looked like we both had about twenty-five foot putts on either side of the hole.
As we parked the cart, we noticed that the green’s sprinkler was on, showering water along the manicured putting surface. Normally, golf courses have a clearly marked valve near the green, that allows you to turn off the sprinkler while you putt. We couldn’t find it. So one at a time, we waited until the sprinkler passed our ball, and then ran on to the green to make our putts. I went first, and ran onto the green with no time to line up the putt or do the usual pre-putt ritual. I just gave it a quick look, hit the putt and ran of the green watching the ball snake around the hole, and…plop, right into the cup. “Nice putt,” my dad said as he waited for the sprinkler to pass his ball and prepared to run onto the green. He ran up to his ball, looked quickly at the line and knocked it toward the hole. As he ran off the green to avoid the returning sprinkler’s shower, I remember screaming, “It’s going in, it’s going in.” And sure enough, it went in. We both made our massively long putts and avoided getting wet. We had beaten the sprinkler and the golf course, or so we thought. Then, out of nowhere, as we stood laughing hysterically at what had just happened (it’s unlikely that one of us would have made our putts without the sprinkler’s interference, let alone both of us rushing the way we did), the skies opened up and a torrential downpour ensued. There we were, laughing at not having gotten drenched by the sprinkler, now being showered on by the rainstorm. We got soaked to the skin and laughed our heads off as we jumped into the cart and drove back to the clubhouse, leaving our golf balls in the hole.
I had shared many fun golfing moments with my dad, since the day he first took me to the driving range as a five year-old. As I got older and moved from Rhode Island, we played golf whenever I would visit, or we would go on vacations to play. We would talk about golf on the phone, and keep up with who was winning in the major professional tournaments. So, when I left Bates and had the luxury of taking some time off work to consider what I wanted to do next in life, I took the opportunity to indulge my passion for golf. With an eighteen handicap, I was a decent golfer. As a kid, I spent all my time in the summer playing tennis, and golf was just something I would do with my dad for fun. But now that I had time to get serious about it, I wanted to be good. Really good.
When the golf bug bites, it bites hard. Small improvements, or even one great shot, can bring you back to the course day-after-day, hoping for a little more improvement, and another great shot. It’s a vicious cycle. Having a passion for golf is a curse and a blessing, but for many just a curse because getting better gets harder once you’ve reached a certain level. The small adjustments it takes to improve your game after you’ve reached about a ten handicap get more difficult to perfect. The margin for improvement gets smaller, and shaving shots off your score harder. Your mental game often determines how well you will play on a given day. Some days you are great and others you are terrible. Consistency is often elusive. But when it is good, it’s as good as it gets.
While on my sabbatical from work, I played golf every day. My goal was to become a scratch golfer (that’s a golfer who shoots even par and has no handicap). I was obsessed, and would drive from my home in Connecticut, two hours to my golf course in Rhode Island (my dad was also a member there) a few times a week to practice. I would hit practice shots, play eighteen holes with my dad, have lunch, play another eighteen holes alone and drive back to Connecticut. I did this for months, until my handicap came down to eight. I was on the way to scratch, or so I thought. After lowering to eight, my handicap would not budge. It stayed at eight for months. So I practiced and practiced more. Nothing. Eight. And then it finally moved, but the wrong way. Ten. I became a decent ten handicap golfer that year, and stayed at that handicap until I quit playing golf with any seriousness or regularity six years ago.
Golf was a great passion journey for me, but one that ended when my dad died and I decided that I no longer wanted to spend the many hours required to maintain a consistent playing level. It brought me many moments of joy, many more of frustration, was the catalyst for many business deals, and the source of many new friends, acquaintances and business associates. It also brought me to some amazing cities and resorts around the world. And it’s a sport I can still enjoy recreationally for the rest of my life.
After six months of golfing and working in my garden (another passion I developed during that same work sabbatical), I was getting itchy for my next career adventure. While picking tomatoes one morning, I got a call from a head hunter. He said he had a job I should consider. It was at a relatively new, but very large publicly-traded entertainment company that was looking for someone with global marketing experience.
After a few interviews, I took a position as Executive Vice President with SFX Entertainment (now known as Live Nation). While the job offered the opportunity to implement, in a massive way, the sponsorship strategies and activation ideas I had spent years developing at Pinnacle Promotions and Bates, I was not that excited about working for another giant company. As I suspected during the interview process, SFX – which was cobbled together by the acquisition of hundreds of small, local and regional concert promoters, sports agents and entertainment venues – turned out to be a gigantic political nightmare.
Politics often took precedence over all else in absurd ways at SFX. The music industry entrepreneurs, broadway producers and sports promoters, all with giant egos and used to getting their way, who made millions of dollars when their companies were acquired during the SFX roll-up process, would frequently flex those egos in the newly created company. They would actually argue over things like who’s jet we should take to a meeting. It was insane. It made the Mad Men of advertising look not so mad. But after several months of not working, the idea of a healthy paycheck outweighed my apprehension of working in this crazy culture.
Immediately after accepting my position, SFX got gobbled up by radio giant Clear Channel Communications, and the global initiatives I was hired to lead were abandoned in favor of local, city-by-city initiatives that served Clear Channel’s domestic radio market footprint. I sucked it up and dove into the job anyway, but never really accomplished what I had hoped. We did get one big deal done in England with Carling Brewery, which closed after I left the company thanks to a talented guy on my team named Michael Rapino. And I did get to live and work in Brazil while furthering the companies entertainment efforts in South America. So, the job did have some lasting rewards.
But after eighteen months, I was done with SFX and ready for the next passion chapter of my life. In a footnote, four years after I left the company, it imploded (my leaving had no bearing on this). The company split into a few smaller pieces, the largest being Live Nation and iHeart Radio. Most of the sports agencies were sold back to their original owners at deeply discounted prices. Some of the owners who had made millions selling those companies to SFX would make millions more selling them again to new buyers. It was a fitting end to the insanity.
Live Nation has been run since its spinoff in 2005 from SFX by none other than Michael Rapino. He was a smart, ambitious guy, who approached me after a company presentation at The Loews Hotel in Miami Beach entitled “Revolution” — the presentation was my plan for globalizing live entertainment sponsorship activation at SFX, a plan that the Clear Channel CEO, sitting in the back row, scowling, would kill within months of my presentation. Michael liked my ideas and vision and wanted to work on my team. He probably really wanted my job instead, and as it turned out, he became the king of live entertainment. He was passionate about the live music business then, and his passion has clearly worked wonders for the Live Nation and its stockholders. Today, Live Nation dominates the live music industry, and with its merger with Ticketmaster, has boosted its size and clout. No competitor even comes close to their influence in the live music business. Well done, Mike!
(come back next week when my journey takes an unexpected twist into an unfamiliar industry that will consume my passion for seven years…)
Until then, Let Your Passion Create Your World!
Robert (aka The Passionist)
by Robert Mazzucchelli | Mar 16, 2017 | Lessons From The Passionist
This is Installment #3 of my serialized eBook, Lessons From The Passionist: How To Turn Passion Into Purpose To Create Greater Meaning and Joy in Your Life. Subscribe below to receive email reminders when new weekly installments are published. Enjoy!
Chapter 1 Not a Destination: My Personal Passion-Guided Journey
Before I begin to help you find your passion and create your fascinating life around it, let me share the story of the passion-guided journey that led me to write this book.
The idea for the book came to me one morning while I was taking my daily morning walk in the neighborhood where I live near Miami Beach. Every morning that I am home, I walk about four miles in an area known as the Venetian Islands – a narrow string of small residential islands bisecting Biscayne Bay. On this walk each morning, I encounter some of my favorite things in life:
- The Miami Skyline. I am a city person at heart, and although I love nature, I feed off the energy created by the hustle and bustle of urban settings. Miami is a beautiful city (it’s actually called the Magic City, and lives up to its name) with a great skyline that is accentuated by colorful sunrises and sunsets. On these mornings, I literally watch Miami grow, right before my eyes, into one the the world’s leading cosmopolitan hubs, full of commerce, art, food, music and life. Miami also has a vibrant Lifescape that oozes passion (A Lifescape is like a landscape, but colored by people and activity rather than plants and nature. We’ll explore Lifescapes later in the book).
- Water. In all directions, I see on these walks, beautiful blue-green water. Small inlets are everywhere, with boats docked beside beautiful homes, and there are expansive views of Biscayne Bay – which leads out to the Atlantic Ocean – from any one of the multiple bridges connecting the islands. My senses of sight, sound and smell are all activated on these walks, and the yellow orange glow from the sunrise always inspires my passion.
- Nature. Little iguanas, birds of all types, fish (sometimes I see dolphins swimming with such beautiful ease or stingrays leaping four feet out of the bay) and plant life of multiple varieties inhabit my little island chain and the ecosystem it encompasses. I especially like the coconut palms which give my walk the feeling of starting each day on a little tropical vacation. Who is not passionate about vacation?
- Finally, there are people. I see adults of all ages, walking, running, rollerblading, strolling with babies in carriages, walking dogs and skateboarding. Everyone is moving for fun or fitness, or just enjoying a morning moment of contemplation. I see many of the same people everyday and I assume that, as for me, passing across this little stretch of islands each day represents some sort of ritual, a way of easing in or fueling up for the day ahead. Same time, same place, same route, same pace, but somehow always a bit different, a bit special. After these walks, I always feel sharp, energized and ready to take on the world.
As I walked and observed the beauty all around me, I asked myself, “How did I get here?” It was a question born of intense gratitude. I looked around at all the things I love – the water, the city, the trees, the boats, the sunshine and the vibrant life energy of my neighbors – and I thought about my daily life and the fact that I have a job I love in a place I love. I just had to ask my self, with emphatic joy, almost giggling irrepressibly, “How did I get here?”
It was not a rhetorical question. On that morning, I found myself living a life that I’m sure I dreamt about when I was a boy, a life that would have been a more than satisfactory answer to the timeless question every young person is asked, “What do you want to do when you grow up?”. Here I was, grown up, doing what I would have wanted to do. “How fortunate am I? How lucky am I?,” I thought that day. And then I asked myself again, this time with curious disbelief, “How DID I get here?” I wanted the answer for myself, of course, but I also wanted to understand the specific influences, attitudes, behaviors, experiences and steps I took throughout my life to get here, so I could help other people get to their near perfect place in life. Then they could help other people on their journeys, and so on. I wanted to help create a Chain of Passion among the lives of people I encountered. I wanted to be a catalyst, creating an incredible Passion Reaction, that would drive people to pursue their unique version of a fascinating life.
The answer to my question was Passion!
Passion? “What kind of simplistic answer is that?”, you ask. “Give me the formula for this success, for this Passion Reaction you talk about. Give me the steps to get to MY happy, inspiring place every morning.” I will. Almost. While this book is not a scientific, one-size-fits-all, step-by-step manual, it is a guide that will provide some clarity and direction. It is based on a collection and recollection of my experiences and observations, and my understanding of the path I followed to find and harness my passions. This process began early in my life, and continues to this day. While I consciously developed and followed a plan many times, I also have been open to improvising when necessary, always looking for opportunities to fearlessly pursue passions, new and old, at every stage of my life, not always knowing where they would lead. Following passion requires a bit of faith, but its worth the risk and uncertainty.
A good friend and business colleague, Bruce Turkel (you should read his book, All About Them) and I eat lunch together every other week at one of Miami’s great restaurants. We are both passionate about good food. Besides enjoyable banter and tasty fare, these lunches provide a frequent opportunity to bounce ideas off each other, and have actually yielded some productive solutions for each of our businesses, as well creating a few new business collaborations. One day, while we were pondering our purposes in life over a dish of perfectly cooked pasta, Bruce looked at me and said, “You know what you are? You’re The Passionist “. I looked at him quizzically and asked him what he meant by that. “You are all about passion and helping people find their passions and giving them the courage, tools and encouragement to pursue them. It oozes out of you. You are The Passionist.”
I had never really thought about what I did in those term before, but I do instinctively try to help people in that way all the time, not because I think I have all the answers, but because I want people to be excited about their lives. Because I am usually so positive and excited about life, and have experienced a variety pursuits for work and pleasure, people often ask me how to pursue a particular activity, dream or burning desire they might have, whether it’s to open a business, become a singer, become a world champion athlete, or even write a book (this is my first!). It must be a calling. So that day, I became The Passionist. Thanks, Bruce.
My whole life then flashed before me as Bruce went on to help me understand my new found purpose. Every dream I have ever pursued, every achievement I have ever attained, every mistake I have ever made, every failure I have ever had and every breath I have ever taken in my life, has been driven and infused by one thing. Passion. Passion has been the theme of my life for as long as I can remember. I’ve never pursued anything half-way, and I rarely say, “someday I will do that.” If I want to do something, I find a way to make it happen, make a plan and get to it.
As a young boy, my passion was to be a professional athlete. I played baseball first, and set up tires in my garage to practice pitching into targets. Night and day, I would pitch into those old tires, imagining that I was on the mound for the Boston Red Sox, with the crowd cheering loudly as I wound up and fired away. I could hear the television announcer calling the play-by-play in my head. It was magical and I got pretty good from all that practice, resulting in lots of success playing Little League baseball. That was my first lesson that practice did indeed pay off, and by age twelve I had a wall of trophies to prove it. It was also when I realized how much fun it was to pursue a passion, although I didn’t think of it in those terms at that age. I was just a kid having fun in life. Too often, we lose that perspective as we age.
I also loved playing ice hockey. I was always around ice rinks as a child because my older sister was a figure skater, so I learned to skate at very young age. At some point, I decided that maybe I didn’t want to be a baseball player. Maybe I wanted to play hockey for the Boston Bruins like my boyhood idol, Bobby Orr. So my pitching targets in the garage became a hockey goal. Serendipitously, I would eventually meet Bobby Orr. It happened after losing a tennis match in Boston when I was seventeen. In a ironic twist, he was actually watching me play that day, and after a hard fought battle against a talented competitor named Peter Palandjian, the son of one of Orr’s Bostonian friends, he came down onto the court to tell me I played a great match. “Chin up,” he said, “there will be other matches. Learn from this one.” I sat slumped on the court, still dazed from my loss. It happened so fast, it took me a while to realize who had just taken the time to offer some words of encouragement. How cool is life? Always be ready for the unexpected.
I continued to play both baseball and hockey, but as fate would have it, things were about to change in my young life. My mom took me for my first tennis lesson was I was eleven. I’m not sure why. I knew nothing about tennis and never asked to learn how to play. In fact, I had only seen it played a few times before that first lesson. I wasn’t that excited about it at the time either, because in my neighborhood, boys played hockey, baseball and basketball (after reaching all of 5’9”, it’s a good thing I didn’t pursue that sport!). But I loved tennis almost immediately. I didn’t really know who the great players were, what the Grand Slam tournaments were or any of the details I knew about baseball and hockey players. I just knew that I liked running and hitting that ball. The sport was fast like hockey and required precise eye-hand coordination like baseball. Unlike hockey, size was less important in tennis. The sport grabbed me instantly. So much so, that by age twelve, I quit playing my beloved hockey to have more time for tennis. Now I was left playing and enjoying baseball and tennis, practicing both as often and as diligently as any sports obsessed boy could in a twenty-four hour day.
Then one night, in the summer before I was to enter LaSalle Academy in Providence, Rhode Island, the high school alma mater of my father and two older brothers, my dad called me into the living room after dinner and changed my world again. He said, “Rob, we need to talk.” Hmmm, was I in trouble? Or…was it time for THAT talk? “Your getting ready to enter high school,” he said, “and baseball and tennis are sports that happen in the same spring season. You need to pick one to focus on. You can’t play both.” Wow, really? I had to choose? I had to give one up? Was I really confronting my first big life decision? At twelve?
I knew my dad was hoping I’d say baseball. I’d been a Little League All-Star and was quite good at second base and hitting home runs, and the LaSalle Academy coach had already expressed interest in having me on the team. I must have been a mature twelve year-old, because I remember thinking in that moment about my future and how this decision might effect it. Something told me that this might be one of the biggest decisions I would make in my life and, as it turned out, it was. You’ll understand why and how it’s relevant to this book as you read on.
As I sat with my dad, I thought about my family excursions to Fenway Park to watch the Red Sox. It was an historic ballpark, a baseball shrine where you could sit all day and watch a double-header, eat hot dogs and feel the presence of baseball legends. People spilled “beah” (that Bostonian for beer) when they got excited and the crowd went crazy when the Red Sox scored. Boston sports fans are passionate, to say the least, and the energy at Fenway was infectious. I thought about the beautifully manicured turf and what it might be like to actually play on that field one day. I had achieved enough success in baseball by twelve, including pitching a no-hitter and hitting a game-winning grand slam, to believe that I could actually make it happen.
Tennis, on the other hand, was still a new game to me. I had played only a few tournaments, with almost no success. In fact, I got destroyed in my first few tennis matches. I couldn’t even beat my brother consistently, which drove me crazy! He was two years older than me and didn’t play any other sports, but treated tennis like a chess match, calculating each shot with surgical precision. I would just lose it on the court when he beat me. I eventually figured out how to stay calm and beat him, but my matches with him were not my finest moments of either tennis skill or behavior on the court. Maybe baseball would be a better option.
However, even with my limited success, I was really starting to enjoy competing in tennis tournaments and my passion for the game was growing every day. I watched Jimmy Connors and Bjorn Borg on television and went to see a few professional tournaments in person. There was something special about tennis for me. Something about the sound of the ball being struck and the fact that you were out on the court alone, doing battle face-to-face with your opponent. There was something glamorous about the crowds, too, especially back in the 70’s, when tennis was enjoying its first heyday as an international sport. The sport’s great champions of that era were some of the first global sports superstars. I’m not sure why I noticed all of this at twelve, but I did.
Nobody, except for a few Bostonian expatriates, knew who Carl Yastrzemski or Bill Lee (Red Sox stars) were in Germany or Italy or Brazil , but I was sure they knew Jimmy Connors, who had just won Wimbledon about the time I was pondering my sports future and trying to answer my dad’s question. All of these thoughts passed quickly through my mind, and I looked at my dad straight in the eyes and said calmly, “Tennis. I’ll play tennis.” He paused, looking a little surprised. Then he asked if I was sure, and if I was prepared to work hard to learn a game that I really wasn’t very good at yet, maybe hoping I would change my answer and pick baseball. I told him I would work as hard as it took to become good, great even. I told him that I would try to get good enough to earn a scholarship to college, and maybe become a pro someday. So, tennis it was from that day forward. Thankfully, my parents would offer unconditional support and encouragement through all of the unanticipated roller-coaster emotions and outcomes that tennis would create in my life over the next several years.
Tennis became my driving passion, and one that would shape my life and continue to influence its course in many ways. It still does every time I get invited to play in a pro-am or meet some business contact over some club doubles. I even helped a good friend write a tennis instruction book that became a video series, which I also directed. The sport has just taken me in so many directions and created so many opportunities in my life, even though I was never a big time champion.
It’s important to note here that the pursuit of a passion is not a smooth ride, as I have learned through first hand experience. Often the road is bumpy and rocky, and the journey lonely. Being passionate doesn’t guarantee success, only that you may have a better chance to succeed. Failure is always a possibility staring you coldly in the face. Pursuing a passion forces you to test yourself, to believe when no one else might believe and to persist when you feel like quitting. Sometimes there is little logic in the pursuit of a passion, just a gut feeling that tells you “I am doing the right thing, keep going” even when your own mind and all of your family and friends are telling you that you are crazy. Passion and fear are not friends. Passion and certainty are not friends. Pursuing some passions, such as competing in a sport or starting a business, often requires near-blind faith in yourself.
So why pursue passions? The answer is simple. As humans, we are feeling beings. Our emotions are part of what makes us tick and they cannot be ignored. If you have a burning desire to become a chef and open a cafe, that desire will stay with you, even when you have decided to become a lawyer because your mother told you it would be easier to get a job and less risky than owning a restaurant. You can ignore your passion and suppress it, but every time you step into a kitchen or eat in a restaurant that you think could be better if you were running it, you will be facing the question of why you chose not to take the leap of faith and be the next Julia Child, Emeril or Mario Batali. If it’s truly a passion, it will haunt you.
It’s okay to postpone pursuing your passions. Many people often pursue them after retirement or as second careers or even hobbies. But life is enjoyed most fully when you can make your passion your life’s work, because you will spend most of your waking hours working. Let’s face it, we don’t know when our lives will end. If you put off pursuing your passion today, thinking that you will get to it someday, and that day never comes…well, that is a tragedy that happens all too often. The choice to take that risk is yours. I choose not to. I want to live with no regrets, and have for the most part.
The other great thing about following your passion everyday is that it helps you find new passions. Because you are so immersed in what you are doing, and living every moment with such a sense of purpose and awareness, you get better tuned in to yourself and what makes you tick. You reach a point where you only want to spend your time doing things that fully engage you. You lose interest in doing things half way. As passions beget more passions – and truly engaged, fascinating and highly accomplished people enter your life – life ultimately becomes an amazing daily adventure of doing the things you truly love with people you love being around.
I did work hard at tennis, as I promised my dad, and I did get a tennis scholarship to attend the University of Richmond. I played four years at Richmond, two as team captain and became a nationally ranked player while in college. After graduation, and still intensely passionate about the game, I began pursuing my goal of becoming a professional tennis player. I did not think that tennis would be my ultimate career, but I wanted to see how far I could get if I really gave it my full attention. I wanted to see if I could get ranked among the top two-hundred tennis players in the world. That was ambitious, but I always liked to dream big. After all, I had devoted countless hours of my life to playing the sport and had hit probably a million of tennis balls trying to perfect my technique over ten years. I was, in fact, a good tennis player. Not a great one. Undeterred, I went off to the satellite tour (the minor, minor league of professional tennis), with whatever money I had saved from teaching lessons and the generous donation I received from my parents in support of my dream.
Professional tennis was hard. There were thousands of great players from all over the world competing for a very few spots in the big time events. Only the top fifty or so players actually make a decent living playing tennis. I was not among them. For me, winning matches was not a very fruitful business venture. In fact, I lost much more than I won, and spent more time hanging around the tournaments practicing than playing matches. But there were ample rewards for my time and effort. I travelled to places I never would have otherwise visited, stoking my lifelong passion for travel. I played tournaments in clubs I never would have been invited to join, giving me access to useful contacts. I practiced and trained my body for several hours a day, fueling the passion I still have today to stay in the best shape possible. Most importantly, I met remarkable people who would become life-long friends and became part of the global tennis community, in which I am still an active member. So as it turned out, pursuing my passion for tennis did actually serve an important purpose in my life. It was just not the one I planned, which was to make it on the big tour. Sometimes, when you are on a passion-guided life journey, you need to flexible and open to a variety of positive outcomes. You just never know where life will take you.
During the down time I had at the tournaments, I spent hours in the VIP sponsor tent taking advantage of the free food (I loved FREE food) and making small talk with the sponsors and their guests. Often, I would ask the sponsors why they had spent so much money to have their brands’ associated with tennis tournaments. Having studied communication in college, I was considering going into the then burgeoning field of sports and event marketing after my tennis playing days were over, so these conversations held great interest for me. I also knew the contacts I was making in these corporate tents might be useful to help me get a job one day. So I tried to meet everyone I could at these events.
The answers I received from the sponsors regarding why they were involved in the tournaments were not what I expected. They ranged from a CEO’s wife telling me, “my husband just loves tennis, so he sponsors this event” to, worse, a CEO telling me, “my wife just loves tennis, so I sponsor the event.” Wow, those were the reasons? I expected some in depth business explanation from the sponsors. I was expecting some strategic discussion about how the demographics of tennis fans offered a good opportunity to reach consumers for the company’s products. In today’s data driven marketing world, a calculated business justification would be imperative. But in 1986, it clearly wasn’t. I’m sure the shareholders of these companies would have loved to hear the rational I was given as to why the sponsors were supporting these tennis tournaments. Who knows, maybe they didn’t think I would have understood the real reasons if they gave them to me. But knowing what I know now about the business, I doubt it. It was mostly a boondoggle.
However, my curiosity and passion for marketing was ignited by these conversations, and the more often I had them, the more I was sensing a new career direction. Playing tournaments was fun, but clearly a short-term plan for my life. I was running out of money fast. Maybe I could combine my love of tennis and my interest in marketing to create my next career move? Finally, after only two-years, I ended my short-lived professional tennis career. Ironically, I was in Miami (my current home town) when I realized that I had reached the end of my tennis dream. I packed my car with all my belongings and drove for twenty-four hours to my apartment in Alexandria, Virginia. From there, I would take my next step in life.
It turns out my that my little passion-guided detour through the pro tennis world was just what I needed to identify and ignite the passion that would become my primary career for the next few decades: marketing and advertising.
The business of sports marketing was in its early days as I was ending my life as a tennis professional. Sports marketing back in 1987 was a loose term for lawyers cutting sponsorship deals for their famous athlete clients. Most of the deals were based on little more than some arbitrary, perceived endorsement value, proposed by an athlete’s agent, and then justified by a CEO or brand manager hoping to rub elbows with their favorite sports star. Everybody seemed to believe and trust lawyers back then, and there was a lot of back slapping and deals based more on relationships than business judgement. There was also very little marketing strategy or data behind the sports sponsorship process, just some great selling ability and contact mining that made a few pioneering sports agents (all lawyers, not marketers), like IMG’s late founder Mark McCormack, very rich. Much richer, in fact, than most of their superstar athlete clients.
I initially assumed I would take the conventional route into the sports marketing industry, and interviewed with the leading companies of that time, IMG, Advantage International and ProServ (all these companies have since been gobbled up in mergers by big advertising and entertainment conglomerates, although IMG still trades under its original name). I was offered a job in event management and sales at Advantage International for a what I felt then was a pittance, but recognize now was a very health starting salary for 1986. But the idea of going to work for a company that was doing exactly the types of sponsorship deals that I felt made no sense for brands did not sit well with me. It did not ignite my passion.
Some marketing strategy was beginning to creep into the sponsorship game around this time, and a company called International Events Group, or IEG, started publishing a weekly newsletter and hosting an annual conference about sponsorship. People in the industry, sponsors, event producers and agents, started paying closer attention to why and how companies were spending their sponsorship money. The hunch I had while downing a free sandwich in the sponsors tent the previous year, about sponsorship needing better planning and justification, was correct. Helping brands make sense of their sponsorship investments was turning into a big business. If I took the job at Advantage International, I wouldn’t really be on the cutting edge of this new thinking. If I worked for one of the glorified sports agents dressed up as sports marketers, how would I be making things better in the industry by perpetuating the traditional, a la carte menu, sponsorship selling process that sadly still persists to some degree today? My passion was to make sports and event marketing better, not simply go through the motions and make mindless deals to make a good salary. Excellence, not money, was my passion.
My dad gave me this great anonymous quote when I was a teen, and I still have it hanging in my office today:
“Excellence is achieved. It is not stumbled onto in the course of amusing oneself. It is built upon discipline and tenacity of purpose”
I was twenty-four, broke and trying to sort out my life. My dream of being a professional athlete was over. I tried, but it was not meant to be. I wasn’t really upset, because I felt I gave it all I had. Not one to brood, it was time to move on. I had tenacity of purpose and was ready to put it to use. As luck would have it, so did my lifelong best friend and first business partner, Steven Roberts, who had also just quit bouncing around on the lower tier of the pro tennis tour.
To be fair, tenacious does not even begin to describe Steven Roberts’ personality. When we played tennis as kids, he would come off the court with bloody knees from diving for shots. At fifty-two, he still dives for balls. He is a passion driven machine who dares to dream big and live big. We even had a mantra growing up. “Think Big. Be Big!” It was our way of reminding ourselves not to limit our ambitions to conquering just the little State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (yes, the smallest state in the U.S has the longest name!) in which we were born and raised, but to go out and conquer the world. Soon we would have a chance to put our mantra into practice.
…Come back next week for the continuation of Chapter 1. You’ll learn where this journey led me next and how it relates to helping you find and harness your passion.
Until then, Let Your Passion Create Your World!
Robert (aka The Passionist)
by Robert Mazzucchelli | Mar 10, 2017 | Lessons From The Passionist
(This is installment #2 of Lessons From The Passionist: How To Turn Passion Into Purpose To Create Greater Meaning and Joy in Your Life. Enjoy!)
Why Passion?
Why passion? Why is passion a subject important enough for me to spend countless hours writing an entire book about? Because nothing happens without it. Passion creates action. No meaningful endeavor ever got off the ground without someone having and sharing passion. No disease was ever cured without passion. No life changing invention, like the computer or phone on which you are reading this right now, ever came to life without passion. No championship was ever won without passion. Passion is what drives people to do things. Big things. Meaningful things. The things that define and give purpose to life. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” And enthusiasm is a major component of passion.
Why write a book that helps people find and harness their passion? Because in many cases, people have a hard time nailing down exactly what it is that stirs them, that makes them tick and gives their lives a sense of purpose and energy. I meet many young people who are struggling to figure out what to do with their lives. They are paralyzed by indecision or fear, or both. Some people are lucky – their passion finds them. Others are even luckier – their passion not only finds them, but provides an enjoyable career and a substantial income. For those people, and I feel fortunate to be among them, work never really feels like work. For most of my career, I would have done my job for free. That’s how much I’ve enjoyed and gotten real satisfaction from all of my “jobs”.
This book is for people seeking their passion and who have a desire to build their life around it in some way. It’s for all the people who want to fulfill their purpose and maximize their potential, rather than just let the days of their lives just pass on by (and they will pass in the blink of an eye if we let them) without yielding any sustainable, lasting satisfaction. It’s for the people who don’t want to waste a single one of their roughly 29,200 days on earth (that’s how many days we get if we live to be eighty years-old). Because even the best education and all the talent and skill in the world will not yield much in the way of life fulfillment if not combined with the enthusiasm and drive created by passion.
Passion is the essence of life. Without passion, life is just a sequence of days that begins at our birth and ends at our death. How effectively we capitalize of the days we are alive – how much satisfaction we gain, how many emotions we experience, how many sunsets we appreciate, how many meals we savor during our lifetime, how many people we embrace with joy -ultimately depends on our level of passion.
U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt, a leader full of passion, is famous for a quote that is a testament to passion’s importance in people’s lives
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Wow, strong language. Teddy didn’t mince words. “His place will never be with those cold and timid souls…” – who wants to hang out with those people? Passionate people live in the arena. The arena of life. And they infect all other people with whom they cross paths with their passion. Wouldn’t it be great to be one of those people?
Our ability to touch other people’s lives in meaningful ways is dependent on passion. People feed off each other’s energy, and people with passion give off an amazing energy that lifts everyone around them, and inspires other people to activate their own passion. I call this the “chain of passion”. Imagine a world full of people building a chain of passion. What great things we would achieve, what problems we would solve and what joy we would all experience.
Unfortunately, very few people know how to harness their own passion, let alone unleash it in others. This book was written to help people navigate the road to finding, developing, harnessing and sharing their passion with the world.
I have numerous passions that I have actively pursued for most of my life. I love sports, business, travel, food, learning, beaches, wine, rum, exercise, people, yoga, fashion, cars, art, philosophy…it’s a big list that has grown over time. These are not just passing interests. All of my passions have been an integral part of my life and/or business in some way for decades. They have contributed to a fascinating life journey I share with everyone I meet in some way.
I describe my life as “purposely never dull,” and have tried to live a life perhaps best described in the words of Rudyard Kipling in his famous poem If (a copy of which I was given by my father as a young boy).
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs, and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you’
But make allowance for their doubting, too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies.
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good nor talk too wise;
If you can dream and not make dreams your master,
If you can think, and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet triumph and disaster,
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings,
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone…
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the will which says to them: “Hold on!”
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a man*
my son!
(*and “woman”, for my female readers)
These powerful words Kipling wrote are about a life filled with and fueled by passion. I’ve been driven by passion ever since I can remember. People ask me all the time, “Were you born like that?” For most of my adult life, I have wondered the same thing. What made me, and other people like me, this way? So, I decided to add another passion to my list: writing this book. It’s an exploration and dissection of passion, and an effort to help other people figure out how to harness its power in their own lives. Buckle up. While you can’t beat a passion fueled life, expect a few bumps along the way.
Special thanks to all the people who have taught me and tolerated me over the years. I hope I have given you as much as you have given me. This book is dedicated to you.
Let passion create your world!
Robert
by Robert Mazzucchelli | Mar 5, 2017 | Lessons From The Passionist
This is Installment #1 of my new e-book, Lessons From The Passionist: How To Turn Passion Into Purpose To Create Greater Meaning and Joy in Your Life. I sincerely hope you enjoy reading this book and share your stories, as they relate to each chapter, over the next several months.
INTRODUCTION
Why is it that some people live fulfilling and fascinating lives while others just seem to toil away the days wishing their life was different? Why is it that some people go through life with a sense of joy, even in the face of life’s persistent adversity, while others seem perpetually miserable, even in the face of apparent success?
I’ve spent the past thirty years observing people (myself included) and their motivations, watching them develop and execute plans to achieve goals in a variety of endeavors, including sports, business, creative fields, education, family life and support of worthy causes that help people or society in profound ways. I’ve worked closely with people who have achieved great success in all of these areas and I’ve witnessed great failures. I’ve succeeded and failed myself, and have studied my own reactions to both outcomes.
Through all this time and observation, what has proven instructive in understanding how to create a fulfilling and fascinating life has been the study of the answers to the following questions (look for my periodic interviews with amazing people from all walks of life and professions, called Passion Profiles, throughout the coming installments of this e-book):
- What drives people to do the things they do in life?
- How do people get started with something? (In any endeavor, what’s the first and best step into the unknown)?
- What motivates people to persist in the face of daunting odds against success? (How do you overcome the fear of starting something new and unknown?)
- What motivates people to persist through failure? (News Flash: Everyone Fails!)
- What motivates people to persist in the face of success (How do you maintain the drive to improve, explore and grow once you have achieved your initial goals)?
- What about success really satisfies people…and what about failure really frustrates people?
- Why do people willfully allow themselves to lead unfulfilling lives when they know life is a one-time deal (no do-overs here!)
- How do you change course at any time in life to create the life you really want?
These are tough questions for anyone to answer and acting on the answers is even tougher. I have had to answer them many times for myself and have helped countless people wrestle with many of these questions through my consulting work, my role as a parent and as a coach.
There is an underlying theme constant in the answer to each of these questions: PASSION!
Passion drives people. Passion creates action. Passion generates ideas and solutions. Passion helps people persist. Passion keeps people motivated. Passion prevents people from settling. And passion causes people to change. Ultimately, passion creates a fulfilling life. Win or lose, success or failure, pursuing passion creates fulfillment in life. All of the trappings people usually associate with success are just icing on the cake.
Identifying, understanding, articulating, nurturing and exercising your passion or passions are the keys to a fulfilling life. Any other motivation will leave you just short of satisfaction. You may be able to buy a nice car without passion. You may pay your mortgage without passion. You may have the money to put your kids through college without passion. You may even get rich without passion. But you are likely to feel that something is missing in your life if your passions go undetected, and worse, ignored. If you blindly bound through life on any plan other than the one driven by your unique passion or passons, chances are you will wake up one day wondering where your life went and why you didn’t do the things you really wanted to do.
In his book, Ego is the Enemy, Ryan Holiday characterizes passion as a bad thing. In fact, he has a chapter entitled Don’t Be Passionate. His contention is that unbridled passion leads to disastrous results, and I would have to agree in many cases. Passion should always be tempered with reason.
Holiday says, “Passion typically masks a weakness. It’s breathlessness and impetuousness and franticness are poor substitutes for discipline, for mastery, for strength and purpose and perseverance.” My response is yes and no. If all you do in life is operate strictly from the emotions created by passion, yes, I agree that is bad. But if you use passion as the catalyst to start an action in your life, then no, I do not agree with him. Without passion there is no action. It gets us off the couch to actually do something in life. Discipline doesn’t do that. Mastery doesn’t do that. We act out of passion and persist out of purpose. At some point, after passion has worked its magic and given us drive, discipline and persistence can take us to mastery and purpose. And passion can bring us back to action when we hit stumbling blocks and want to quit. Passion gives us the energy to persist. Passion, harnessed in the right way, can be used to keep the spark alive in our lives so that the inevitable pain and drudgery that we all experience at times does not stop us from moving forward.
Like many positive things, passion can be misused with disastrous consequences. However, without it, mankind would cease harnessing one of its biggest strengths. It’s human-ness.
So we begin the journey…Read Installment # 2 next week, where I will explain how people find and develop their passions in life, and how you can find and develop yours!.
Until Next Week, Live Every Moment!
Robert (aka The Passionist)
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