Teachers CAN Stoke Your Passion: How Have They Helped You?

by Robert Mazzucchelli | Apr 22, 2017 | Lessons From The Passionist

(This in installment #8 of Lessons From The Passionist: How To Turn Passion Into Purpose To Create Greater Meaning and Joy in Your Life.  Last week we explored the influence of friends.  This week we look at teachers, and how they can help ignite and develop our passion.  Maybe you have had an influential teacher somewhere in your educational experience?)

Teachers we encounter during our school years can have significant influence on our ability to harness passion in our lives.

All of us have had a teacher or two somewhere in our past who made an impression and helped shaped our life in some way.  I’ve had a few at various points in my educational journey, each of whom demonstrated enormous passion and increased my excitement about learning, while opening my eyes to possible ways I could create a fun and amazing life for myself by pursuing my passions. Three stand out.

I should preface this section by acknowledging that until about tenth grade, I was reasonably disinterested in school and viewed it as a necessary evil I had to endure until I could get to the hockey rink, baseball field or tennis court.  My heart was set on becoming a professional athlete when I was young, and school was just the nuisance I was obligated to attend because my parents and the state said so.  Had it been up to me, I probably would have preferred to spend all my time pursuing the sports I loved.  Thankfully, I had tough parents and a respect for the law, or I probably would not be writing this book today.

My tenth grade english teacher at LaSalle Academy was a guy named Michael Mosco.  He was a short, wiry, well-dressed, brown-haired guy who spoke with excitement and energy all the time.  His passion for words and sentences just oozed out of him as he paced back in forth in front of his classroom.  I had always been a decent writer (my mother posted “grammar rules” signs in the kitchen when I was growing up, so English was drilled into me and my siblings when we were young).  English was a class I tolerated and often coasted through with little extra effort required.  But this time, things felt a bit different.  I sensed I might have to really think and work to do well in Mr. Mosco’s English class.

I walked into the classroom on the first day of school and written on the board was a question — “What is universality?” Okay.  I looked at the question, took a seat at a desk in the front of the room, and joked around with some friends that I hadn’t seen all summer.  We were immediately startled as Mr. Mosco asked an urgent voice, “What is universality?”  “What is he talking about?”, I thought.  My classmates and I just looked at each other.  We were all probably thinking the same thing, which was, “Who is this guy and why is he so excited at 9am on the first day of school?”  Was he a BIG coffee drinker?  No, it turned out – just a guy with an incredible passion for teaching English.

Mr. Mosco was asking a deep philosophical question to a bunch of kids who had probably never thought that deeply in their lives.  He was challenging us to think, while also putting us on notice that his class would not be one in which we could coast or just hide in the back of the room and get by.  He walked between the rows of desks that day and asked each and every one of us what we thought about his question.  He got in our face.  What did we, a group of fifteen and sixteen year-olds think about universality!?  Really?  The question and the teacher’s passion for exploring the answer somehow woke up my brain in a way no teacher had up to that point, and I started to think and engage in a conversation unlike any I had had in school before.  We were debating, for forty-five minutes, the meaning of a WORD. ONE word.  We were learning.  We were growing.  This was actually cool.  And fun.

That year in Mr. Mosco’s class, reading great books and participating in long conversations, debates and arguments, gave me the first glimmer of hope that maybe school could be more than just sitting in class waiting for the bell to ring.  It was like being in John Keating’s class (Robin Williams’ character in Dead Poets Society – “carpe diem, seize the day…”).  Maybe I could be engaged and excited by something other than chasing a tennis ball around a court and hitting it in places my opponent could not reach.  Maybe school would have a purpose beyond wasting the daytime hours during which I preferred to be outside playing my favorite sport.

For forty-five minutes, three-times a week, over the course of a few months, one man with a passion for words and sentences changed my perception of high school and learning in general.  He opened my eyes to thinking about words, something I took for granted until then, and how they convey meaning.  He introduced me to Elements of Style, the seminal book on good writing that still sits on my desk and is embedded in my brain.  He taught me to enjoy discussing and debating ideas and concepts, a process and skill that would be essential years later in my advertising career, where every idea and word used can make a huge difference on the impact the work will have for clients.  Mr. Mosco transferred his passion to me during my time in his class.  The Chain of Passion was at work again.

When I arrived at the University of Richmond to start my freshman year, I had only a vague idea about what I was there to learn.  I hadn’t even given a possible major a lot of thought when picking the school.  I went there to play tennis, which is like a full time job in college, and believed that I would spend several years after graduation playing professionally.  What happened after tennis, I thought, would unfold in due time.  I liked business, but had no concrete plans or keen academic interest I was excited to pursue.  But I was always making money with small businesses as a kid, shoveling snow, stringing tennis racquets or detailing cars.  So I figured I would most likely major in business and hope for the best.

I took the core classes during my freshman year to qualify for the five-year, juris doctorate/MBA program offered at the University of Richmond (the program sounded efficient to me, more bang for the time I would have to spend in school).  I signed up for an ambitious schedule of accounting, statistics and logic classes, along with required French and Biology classes.  All classes that I hated.  As fate would have it, I also signed up for two elective classes: The History of Entrepreneurship and Introduction to Speech Communication.   I was allowed to choose these classes my freshman year because I had scored high enough on a assessment test to exempt me from the required basic freshman English classes. Thanks, Mr. Mosco (and Mr. Scott, a great English teacher I had at Kent School.  He taught me the life lessons contained in Melville’s Moby Dick, one of my favorite books.  Coincidentally, his bother had been a professional tennis player and writer).

The speech class was taught by Dr. Jerry Tarver.  He was an amiable, good humored, slightly rumpled, graying man in his early fifties who wrote speeches for CEO’s and politicians when not teaching.  His somewhat high-pitched, southern-accented voice had a unique way of cracking when he spoke, which for reasons I can’t explain, kept your attention riveted on what he was saying.  He was always smiling and joking.  He was a passionate and engaging man who loved his subject, and had even written a book on speechwriting, which was the textbook for another one of his classes that I took during my senior year.  After a few speech classes with Dr. Tarver, I saw my future standing in board rooms making presentations (about what, I still had no idea).  Because of his influence, I decided to change my academic focus from business/law to business/communication (I ended up majoring in Communications and Economics).

Why the switch?  It was simple.  My passion for words and language far outweighed my passion for numbers and rigid legal precedents.  I was, I discovered, a creative person at heart.  Dr. Tarver taught me the power of using words and speech effectively.  He sensed that I loved making speeches and communicating with people, and he encouraged me to improve my skills in this area.  I do love persuading people to do things, and have made a career of it.   Apparently, I was always persuasive – as my family and friends are quick to point out – but I didn’t understand why or how.  Studying communication gave me the tools to be more intentional and focused in my speech.  After a few classes and some guidance from Dr. Tarver, who became my academic advisor, there was no doubt what I would be doing for a career after my tennis playing days ended.  I would be using words and ideas.  Writing and speaking would not only become my craft, it would become my passion.

The University of Richmond added a student speaker to the commencement program the year I graduated.  It was the first time they had done so, and the speaker was to be chosen by a competition judged by a panel of professors and administrators.  With the help of Dr. Tarver, I wrote an excellent speech and entered the competition.  It was a thoughtful, hopeful speech that challenged my fellow graduates to do something meaningful with their lives after leaving Richmond.  The process of writing and presenting the speech even made me think I might pursue a political career someday (am ambition that was quickly discarded after living in Washington D.C. for seven years and meeting actual politicians.  I’ve met criminals I trusted more!).  I felt I had a chance to win the speech competition. When the five finalists were chosen from hundreds of submissions, I was among them.  But when I saw the list, my heart dropped.  Of the five finalists, I was the only male student.

I could have written the Gettysburg address and lost that competition.  I knew the school would not pick the only male finalist on the list.  It was still the pre-PC era, but I knew I would lose and I did.  When I pressed Dr. Tarver, who was on the speaker selection committee, about the results, he obliquely confirmed my suspicions and told me I had written and delivered the best speech.  Of course, that was only his opinion.  But I knew my speech was good.  That loss, and the lesson it taught, me did not diminish my passion in any way.  After my tennis career was over, my speaking skills would be put to good use.

I sadly don’t remember the name of the professor who taught the History of Entrepreneurship.  I wish I did because I‘d like to thank him.  I was vaguely familiar with the word entrepreneur back then, but unclear about its actual meaning.  I knew an entrepreneur was someone who started businesses.  The word wasn’t as thrown around in pop culture in 1981 the way it is today.  Entrepreneurs were not yet the rock stars they are now.   But I liked starting businesses, so the class seemed like a good fit.  The professor, unbeknownst to me at the time, would change my life.  Here’s how: about three weeks into the class, he assigned a book for us to read called Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the American Industrial Enterprise.  As the title suggests, it was a book about how companies developed their structure and strategy.  Did strategy create structure, or did structure dictate or inform strategy?  The book compared and contrasted Ford and General Motors as examples of two car companies that developed and operated very differently in pursuit of the same objectives.  The details of the book aren’t important here, but my experience with this book in this class, and how it unleashed a passion, is important.

I knew a little about the corporate world prior to entering college because my mother had bought me a subscription to FORTUNE magazine when I was seventeen (why she did, I still wonder but she obviously really understood me and prepared me for my life – an amazing mom).  I had taken a job teaching tennis at Woodway Country Club in Darien, Connecticut during the summer between high school and prep school (I did a post graduate year at the Kent School because a tennis related injury prevented me from attending college immediately after high school, a story I will tell in more detail later in the book when we discuss how to sustain passion in the face of setbacks…).

During my three hour train rides from my home Providence to the club in Darien (a suburb of NYC) every weekend, I would read FORTUNE cover to cover.  Like a sports fan following their favorite athletes, I studied the performance of the CEO’s of all the top companies.  This was my first exposure to the business world.  My father was a dentist, so business wasn’t really discussed at the dinner table.  I had to teach myself, and was motivated to do so that summer because almost all of the people I was teaching were major business executives.  In fact, I ended up teaching a few of the CEO’s I read about in FORTUNE that summer at Woodway Country Club.  One, David Kearns of Xerox, even ended up being my college commencement speaker!

Like my mom, the professor teaching the History of Entrepreneurship sensed my passion for business and paid particular attention to me in class discussions.  The day he assigned us to read Strategy and Structure, he asked me to meet him after class.  He told me that he felt, after a few weeks of interaction in class, that I had a unique ability to understand the concepts of entrepreneurship.  He wanted me to teach the next few classes based on what I would learn from the book.  Whoa! Talk about trial by fire.  I was eighteen, new to college, and this guy wanted me to teach the class.  Great.  Now I really had to focus on the content of that book.

I devoured the book, organized my thoughts and reviewed my syllabus with the professor (damn, I wish I remembered his name).  He made a few changes and then it was show time.  The class had about fifteen students, so it wasn’t too intimidating.  I’d given tennis clinics to bigger groups of people.  As I started to talk about the content of the book, and ask my fellow students questions, things just flowed.  The time flew by.  I felt fully engaged in a way that I had only felt on the tennis court up to that point in my life.  I enjoyed the topic of entrepreneurship and I liked teaching people.  My passions for business, teaching and leadership were stoked in this class, and I owe that professor a big hug.

By the time I reached my junior year in college, I was pretty clear about my life.  After graduation, I would pursue my passions for tennis and entrepreneurship.  My core business skill would be communication (which is exactly how things turned out).  Frankly, I was ready to leave school and get started on life at that point.  My senior year of college seemed like a waste of time in many respects, but I begrudgingly endured it (even sitting through the graduation watching another student give the speech I thought I deserved to be giving).  Such is life.  It has all turned out quite well, and the learning and adventure continue to be fueled by my passions.

We hear people talk about the impact teachers have on students.  Sometimes it sounds obvious and trite.  I can say that from my experience, the impact is profound in many ways.  For me, and for many people I have interviewed, teachers have been a major source of inspiration.  They often inspire passion, either by introducing a student to a new passion or helping to stoke the flames of an existing passion.  Or sometimes, as in the case of Jerome Sordillion of Cirque du Soleil, a teacher can be so negative about the odds of success in pursuing a passion, that the student works hard to prove the teacher wrong!   In either case, passion is fueled and the result can be a fascinating life.

Passion Journey Exercise #3

Take out a piece of paper and write down the answers to these questions:

• In which ways have I been influenced by my teachers, and has that influence been positive or negative in my life?
• Name one or two teachers who have had the most influence in my pursuit of a passion in life.  What was the passion and why is it so meaningful to me?
• Has a teacher ever encouraged me to pursue or discouraged me from pursuing a particular passion?
• Have I have had any teachers that have made a life-changing impact on my life with regard to my pursuing a passion?
• Do I pursue any passions in my life today that I would not have pursued if not for a particular teacher?  What is that passion and who was that teacher?

Use the answers to these questions to explore your motivations for pursuing your passion. Is there a passion you have today that was stoked by a particular teacher?  How did they help you ignite that passion?  Retrace those steps and see if you can rekindle the feeling that got you hooked on that passion.  If it’s a passion you’ve set aside, but still have, see if this exercise can help you bring it back into your life.  Who knows where the process might lead?

In the next section of Chapter 2, we’ll explore the influence coaches can have on our passion.

Until then,

Let Your Passion Create Your World!

Robert (aka The Passionist)

Following your passion today? If so, maybe you need to thank a friend.

by Robert Mazzucchelli | Apr 13, 2017 | Lessons From The Passionist

(Installment #7 is the continuation of Chapter 2: What Drives You To Do The Things You Do from my book, Lessons From The Passionist: How To Turn Passion Into Purpose To Create Greater Meaning and Joy in Your Life.  In this installment, I explore the influence friends have on our ability, desire and courage to follow our passions in life).

Early friendships, both close and casual, have enormous impact on our attitudes and behaviors.  Therefore,  they can also have a significant and life-changing impact on our ability to harness passion in our lives.  My own experience serves as a crystal clear example.

I introduced you to my great friend, Steven Roberts, earlier in the book.  I didn’t go to school with Steven and didn’t even live close to him in Rhode Island, where we both grew up.  We met at a tennis camp and shared the same tennis coach for part of our junior tennis careers.  We traveled to tournaments together as kids, we practiced together every week, and we even drove Steven’s white diesel Puegeot across the country during on summer break from college, playing in tennis tournaments each week as we explored the United States, city by city, town by town.  Suffice it to say, we’ve spent a lot of time together.   We’ve been friends for over forty-years, and we still talk every week.

Steven and I had a saying when we were young: “think big, be big!”  I’m not sure exactly when we adopted that saying as our mantra, but for years we would repeat it, and we both knew what it meant.  It was our way of saying that even though we were from the smallest state in the United States, and not the epicenter of tennis or any industry we hoped to be in at some point in the future (it ended up being marketing and advertising), we did not want any limits set on our potential achievements. “Think big, be big” was our battle cry, our refusal to let anyone or any circumstances dictate how we were going to live and who we were going to become.

As a result, we both left Rhode Island for college.  I went to the University of Richmond on a tennis scholarship and Steven went to California, first attending the University of California at San Diego and then Berkeley.  We both traveled the world playing in professional tennis tournaments in the summer, something only a handful of tennis players from Rhode Island did (although there were a few great one.  My frequent childhood sparring partner, Jane Forman, became a world top-fifty professional who battled tennis great Martina Navratilova on Centre Court at Wimbledon). Our tennis adventures were the first manifestation of our “think big, be big” slogan.

After we both realized that a future in the business of playing tennis was unlikely, we opened a sports marketing company, Pinnacle Promotions, together in Alexandria, Virginia.  At the time, Washington, DC was a major center for sports marketing companies, and we wanted to play with the big boys.  So we set up shop in their backyard.  Forget the fact that we had no experience, no money and few contacts to help us get started.  “Think big, be big” would carry the day.  And it did.

Within one year, we landed a national promotion contract to promote a new product, Sneaker Be Cool, a short-lived sister product to the famous Gold Bond Powder that was then owned by Block Drug Company.  Through that contract, we introduced consumers to Sneaker Be Cool at running races and events across the United States, rubbing elbows with other big brand sponsors and sports marketing experts, and getting one step closer to the big time.

One satisfying note on winning the Sneaker be Cool business was that the company we beat out to get the account was Advantage International, the major sports marketing firm whose job offer I had turned down to start Pinnacle Promotions with Steven.  When I declined their job offer, which was an entry level project management position, the person offering me the job said, in a mocking tone I might add, that I was crazy to even consider trying to compete with them by starting my own company.  In the early days of the sports marketing industry boom, which created great athlete/brands like Arnold Palmer, Bjorn Borg and Air Jordan, people who wanted to be in the business would have given their left arm to get that job offer with that company.  But I turned them down because I believed I could do more on my own.  Crazy?  Maybe.  But the offer as an entry level project manager didn’t fit the “think big, be big” philosophy.

I was young, had nothing to lose, and wanted to conquer the world of sports marketing with innovative thinking, not just work as an entry level “step and fetch it,” a position that might last a few years before I could make a meaningful thought leadership impact on the industry.  I was impatient and willing to put in whatever time and effort were required to succeed.  So Steven and I started Pinnacle.  Although we ultimately didn’t overtake any of the big companies in the industry, our small successes created bigger successes.  We made a name for ourselves as being innovative and creative thinkers.  This reputation helped us win business in other areas of marketing, not just sports in sports and event sponsorship.  Our small company’s success was big enough to create new and bigger career opportunities for me and Steve.   About seven years after I declined the Advantage International offer, I ran into the guy who offered it to me at the U.S. Open Tennis Championships in NYC.  I was then president of Bates Promotion Group with an office in the Chrysler Building and several leading brands as clients.  He still had the same job as when I interviewed with him.  Imagine where I would have ended up had I taken his offer!  Probably not sitting here writing this book.  Score one for “think big, be big.”

The point of this story is that my friend, Steven Roberts, influenced my life view and I his, in that we shared our “think big, be big” philosophy and supported each other in our efforts to live life true to our beliefs and dreams.  We fueled each others’ passion to live not by anyone else dictates, but by our own.  And we continue to support each other to this day.

I mentioned Cirque du Soleil star Jerome Sordillon earlier.  When we spoke about how he became a world-renowned circus artist, he told me that it was his best friend who told him to quit the construction internship he hated.  It was that same friend who asked him one day to join him on some vaguely described trapeze adventure two hours away from their home in Lyon. That adventure on the trapeze turned out to be a job interview with Club Med, where Jerome was immediately hired because of his athletic skills.  At Club Med, he met a women who also recognized his enormous talent.  She suggested he attend apply to the prestigious Ecole National de Cirque in Montreal, which only accepts twenty students a year out of thousands of applicants.  He applied and was accepted.   Upon graduation from that school, he was found by Cirque du Soleil and hired to be a featured performer with arguably the best circus performance company of all time.   His friend was the catalyst for the whole chain of events that changed Jerome’s life.  Who knows where Jerome might be had he not had that friend?

Pay attention to your friendships, past and current. They reveal a lot about your own life and just might be an important key to whether or not you are following your passion today!
Passion Journey Exercise #2

Take out a piece of paper and write down the answers to these questions:

• In which ways have I been influenced by my friends, and has that influence been positive or negative in my life?
• Name one friend who has had the most influence in my life. What was the influence and why is it so meaningful to me?
• Has a friend ever encouraged me to follow or discouraged me from following a particular passion?
• Do I have any friends that I feel have made a life-changing impact on your life?
• Name one friend that I have influenced in some way? How did I influence them?
• Do I pursue any passions in my life today that I would not have pursued were it not for a friend? What is that passion and who was that friend?
• Do I have any friends in my life today who are encouraging or discouraging with regard to me pursuing my passion? Who are they? What are there reasons for their feelings? Do I believe them?
• Are any of my friends helping me or holding me back from pursuing my passion today?

Use the answers to these questions to reflect on your own life and attitudes. Were you encouraged by your friends to develop and pursue your passions? Are there passions you had when you were younger that were squashed by a friend, that you would like to rekindle now? Are there thoughts or attitudes that were influenced by your friends that are holding you back (or helping you succeed) in pursuing your passions or attacking life with a passionate attitude?

Depending on your answers to these questions, you might be really lucky and have a great supportive friend network. Or you might need to rethink which friends are helping or hurting your ability to create the life you want. Give it some thought and make sure you are surrounding yourself with the right people everyday.

Next week, in Installment #8,  we will explore the influence of teachers in out life.  Until then…

Let Your Passion Create Your Life!

Robert (aka The Passionist)

Lessons From The Passionist: How To Turn Passion Into Purpose To Create Greater Meaning and Joy in Your Life — Chapter 2 : The Early Influences That Drive You To Create Your Life

by Robert Mazzucchelli | Apr 6, 2017 | Lessons From The Passionist

(This is Installment #6 of Lessons From The Passionist:  How To Turn Passion Into Purpose To Create Greater Meaning and Joy in Your Life.  Today’s post is the beginning of Chapter 2: The Early Influences That Drive You To Create Your Life.  In this chapter, I will help you begin to explore why you have chosen the life you have.  I’ll help you examine the people, events, decisions and circumstances that in some way have determined how your life got the way it is, and how you can unwind it and change it, if you want it to be different.  I hope this helps anyone looking to understand their own life better or anyone looking to go in a new direction.  To change your life, you must first understand the influences that brought you to your current circumstances.  Then, it’s easier to find the right path by harnessing your passion.  Enjoy and please share with friends.  And remember, please post your feedback.)

Everyone knows someone who just exudes positivity and passion.  They seem to be enthusiastic about everything they do, and are always bustling with a variety of activities.  And they’re excited about them all.  They seem to have an unlimited reserve of energy, ideas, and solutions to problems, and are curious about everything.  It also seems nothing can get them down or make them negative.  They roll with the punches and approach everything they do with high energy, zeal, and an expectation of enjoyment and success.  They are inspirational and fun to be around because the energy and attitude they have are infectious.  It makes us feel good to be with them.  You may even wonder sometimes (perhaps it’s why you are reading this book), “How did they get like that?”,  or maybe, “How could I be more like that?”

While some of these unusually passionate people may have born with what seems like a “passion gene,” it’s more likely that they were just fortunate enough to spend their developmental years in an environment prone to making them view life as enjoyable, positive, hopeful, and even exciting with all its possibilities.  They learned — consciously or subconsciously — how to adopt and sustain a positive, passionate approach to life.  Their experiences, attitudes, choices and the people around them shaped their passion-driven life view.  In this chapter, I explore how you can begin to shape or reshape your life so that you can approach everything you do, even some of the things you may now dread, with more energy and passion, and begin creating your fascinating life.

As with most human behavioral traits, there are a combination of factors that influence our programming when it comes to passion – they are people, environmental circumstances and experiences.  These influences help shape our outlook on life and the behaviors we choose.  Our capacity and willingness to embrace our passions, and build our life around them, are influenced early in life and are fine tuned as we develop and grow.  It is a never-ending process.

To develop a passion for anything, we must freely engage in the activity without the thought of success or failure.  We must engage out of fun, curiosity, or a sense of challenge.   We must enjoy the process of pursuit of the passion, not just anticipate an outcome.  How we are introduced to and guided through our early experiences with our passions, or would be passions, is also critical.  In my case, I had parents, friends, coaches, and teachers who supported me in pursuit of my tennis and business passions.  Occasionally I encountered negative people, but it just made me engage more fully and focus more intently.  I wanted to prove the naysayers wrong.  I wanted to show them that I could live life on my terms by following my passions.

I’ve interviewed many people that have turned other people’s negativity into positive, forward-thrusting passion.  Cirque du Soliel feature performer, Jerome Sordillon, told me that his early school teachers’ negativity drove him to prove to her that he could accomplish something with his athletic skills.  Because he was a French national-champion gymnast as a young teen, and strong, Jerome’s school put him in a curriculum to be a construction worker.  He hated it.  After completing three years of course work, he was assigned to a required internship.   After three weeks, he was miserable and quit with no idea what he would do with his life.  Today, he twirls high above the stage, hanging from two straps and “walking” on air to the amazement and delight of cheering crowds around the world.  He chose to follow his passion.  I’ll talk more about Jerome’s story later in this chapter.

As I began to write this book, and reflect on my experiences and observe the lives of others, I realized that it is a few key people we encounter throughout our lives who build and enlarge our capacity to harness passion.  When we are young, they ignite our curiosity and inspire our dreams.  They help us learn to develop confidence and mitigate fear.  These people are the fuel of our lives, powering our passion engine.  I sensed this early in life, and gravitated to the people who were positive, encouraging, and full of life and curiosity.  The people who laughed often and smiled a lot – they were fun to be around.  I stayed away from people who were negative, cynical and draining, and who were always looking for the next shoe to drop in life.  They were not fun to be around.  They seemed to suck any passion right out of you.  I avoided too much exposure to those people, and still do today.  These negative people deplete your energy and steal your passion, and while I always try to be compassionate to people who are in a tough emotional place because of difficult life circumstances, I guard myself from being infected with their corrosive negativity.  I tried to learn from the passionate people I encountered when I was young, the people who set a positive example of how to look at life, how to choose behaviors, how to roll with the punches, and how to create an amazing life.  These people fueled my passions as I developed, and that fueling has never stopped.

If this didn’t happen for you, it’s okay.  The good news is that you can fuel or refuel at any point in life.  You make the choice.  Human interaction and energy are critical for developing and harnessing passion, because passion energy grows when shared and combined with the passion energy of other people.  I call this the Chain of Passion.  Who has been part of your Chain of Passion?  Who lit a fire under you as you were growing and exploring life?  Who inspired you to get up a little earlier each day to take a run, hit one-thousand tennis balls, study a bit more than was required to just get by or just look at the beauty of the sunrise?  And who are you inspiring now?

Given that people are the fuel, I thought it best to start this passion quest roadmap by helping you examine and understand the biggest contributing factor to finding and developing passion – the people who have shaped your life.  The relationships covered in this chapter are the ones that have imprinted the passion code in all of our hearts and minds, and understanding their impact on us is critical for leading a passion-driven life.  While many of the people discussed are most likely people you have encountered early in life, you never stop encountering people who can influence your passion.  I meet them all the time and when I least expect it.  The Chain of Passion can link to us whenever we are ready.

Let’s look at the following types of people who have shaped your life and influenced your capacity to harness your passion:

  Parents, Siblings and Relatives

  Friends

  Teachers

  Coaches

  Other Role Models

Parents, Siblings, and Relatives

The people who have undoubtedly had the most influence on us are our parents.  When we are babies, the importance of this relationship is obvious.  We would not have survived without them or some adult feeding us, bathing us, and getting us dressed every day.  They took care of us when we were sick, and as we grew into toddlers, they helped us navigate walking and moving around the world on our own without encountering too much danger.

When we entered school, our parents helped us with our early development in reading, writing, math, art and dealing with other kids and teachers.  They tried to insure that we got enough physical activity to develop our bodies, and tried to get us to eat healthy foods.  If we were fortunate, they began to introduce us to activities like sports, music and reading outside of the required school assignments, or suggested (or better, insisted) we get a part time job.  I remember my mom taking my siblings to piano lessons every week, driving my sister to the skating rink every morning at six am and driving me and my brother to my first tennis lesson with a women named Mrs. Hecht in Barrington, Rhode Island.  This was a day that would later prove to be life changing.

Without making an exhaustive list of all the things parents do for their kids, it’s easy to see that they are a pervasive and significant influence in our lives.  When we were adolescents, this sometimes felt like a mixed blessing as we were trying to assert our independence, but there is no doubt that our parents played a prominent role in our development of a general life view.  If our parents were negative, cynical people, odds were that we might develop a negative and cynical life view.  If our parents were positive people, who expected to enjoy playing a game, win or lose, it’s likely that we did, too.  If our parents expected to be well paid for their time or work, chances are that we expected the same when we set out into the working world.  If our parents viewed life as a noble struggle to put food on the table for their family, chances are we did too.  And if our parents viewed life as an adventure of their own making, well, you get the idea.  Often, they are the first link in our Chain of Passion.  Did your parents add a link for you?  How did they influence your ability to harness passion?  Did they help you embrace your passions or make it difficult to do so?

We have all been programmed from our earliest experiences to think, feel and act in a certain way, and sometimes not necessarily in the best way to create the life we want.  Many people tragically live someone else’s dream.  Some people develop without much parental influence or guidance.  That’s okay, because research shows that strong passion may develop even under those circumstances.  In her New York Times best-selling book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perserverance,  Angela Duckworth concludes that, “A degree of autonomy during the early years is also important.  Longitudinal studies tracking learners confirm that overbearing parents and teachers erode intrinsic motivation.  Kids whose parents let them make their own choices about what they like are more likely to develop interests later identified as a passion.”  If you were left alone to forge your own path, you may have found it easier to pursue your passions as a result.

Some kids have no choice.  Their parents are not around much, if at all.  I have great admiration for people who lead incredible, passion-driven lives, who did not have one or both parents present while growing up.  They might have missed out on some critical early nurturing, guidance and lessons-by-example provided by parents, but somehow they found ways to learn the positive attitudes and behaviors that drive passion.  At some point, we all have to own our lives and decide how we want them to go.  You can live with passion or not.  It’s your choice.

Vivid evidence of how parents, siblings, and relatives can consciously and subconsciously program our attitudes about life and influence our passions can be observed in families that have exceptional multigenerational success at one particular activity.  Many children, grandchildren, siblings or close relatives of highly acclaimed athletes, performers, artists, politicians and business people frequently achieve identically high levels of success in the same profession or activity.

Here are just a few examples of the familial Chain of Passion at work:

We are all familiar with the Kennedy family.  In that family they developed one president, John F. Kennedy; two senators, Robert F. Kennedy and Ted Kennedy; and one congressman, Patrick J. Kennedy.  While you might argue that their wealth and connections created much of their political success, many wealthy families have tried and failed at this.  Another notable political dynasty is the Bush clan.  President George H.W. Bush has a son, George W. Bush, who also became President of the United States.  Another son, Jeb Bush, was Governor of Florida.  While connections and money alone can help, they can’t provide the passion needed to win elections in this difficult, and sometimes no-holds-barred, profession.

The late golfing legend and leader of Arnie’s Army, Arnold Palmer, changed the face of golf and became successful in numerous businesses upon retirement from competition.  His grandson, Sam Saunders, is also an accomplished PGA tour golfer.  I’m sure growing up on the course with one of the all-time best golfers somehow raised Sam’s passion for the game and expectations for himself, especially when he was competing with his grandfather.  Sam said in a New York Times interview after Palmer died, “The way our family operated was, nothing was given to you.  Arnold wanted all of us to be successful on our own, and my parents were the same way, and I’m so grateful for that.  If you’ve always been handed things, when life gets hard, you won’t know how to handle it.”  True, and kudos to his parents.  But the presence of Arnie’s greatness up close and personal also had to inspire, teach and influence Sam Saunders in a way that was unique from the experience of thousands of other talented kids who did not have the great Arnold Palmer as their grandfather and did not make it onto the PGA tour.

Former world #1 tennis player and media personality, John McEnroe, has a brother, Patrick McEnroe, who also made his living playing professional tennis, reaching a career high #28 in the world.  He even became the longest-tenured Davis Cup captain and was head of the United States Tennis Association’s player development for several years.  Patrick now does tennis commentary for ESPN and CBS.  I played against Patrick in a high school match while I was attending the Kent School in Connecticut (Patrick played for Trinity-Pawling in Pawling, NY, a neighboring town to Kent).  It was a close match, and I remember thinking at some point mid-match, “He’s good, but he’s not Johnny Mac good.”  But he shared Johnny Mac’s passion.  I wonder how many matches Patrick won because opponents were intimidated that he was the brother of the world’s #1 ranked player?  You could count one match for sure, because I lost that day when I really had an even chance of winning.

Another incredible familial success story from the world of tennis is that of the McNair family from Bethesda, Maryland.   By anyone’s standards, my dear friend Fred McNair IV, has an impressive tennis pedigree.  He was a top-ranked junior player, an All-American at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a French Open Doubles Champion, and was ranked #1 in the world with partner, Sherwood Stewart (another great athlete who qualified for the Senior PGA Tour in Europe after retiring from tennis!). But that’s not the interesting part of this story relative to the subject of parental influence on passion.  Fred IV’s father, Fred III, was a tennis champion is his own right, reaching the level of what would now be considered an elite professional tour player.  Fred III played on the United States Tennis Association National Father and Son circuit for thirty-one consecutive years with with ALL FIVE of his sons, winning eight national titles with two of them, Fred IV and John.  He was a finalist another six times with two sons, Fred IV and Bruce.  And in one year he won two national titles with two different sons, a feat never accomplished before or since by another father.  You might say the Chain of Passion for tennis had many links in the McNair household.

Other examples include the late crooner, Nat King Cole, whose daughter, Natalie Cole, also became a grammy-winning recording artist.  Hollywood star, Kirk Douglas, whose son Michael Douglas is a two-time Oscar-winning actor and producer.  Paloma Picasso, daughter of painting and sculpting master Pablo Picasso, is a successful jewelry designer.  NFL Quarterback, Archie Manning, who has two sons, Peyton and Eli, who have each won TWO Super Bowls.  And Grammy-winning singer Janet Jackson had five Grammy-winning brothers who inspired her pursuit of music.  Is all of this just genetic talent?  Not likely.  I could write several books telling more of these family passion success stories.

While it’s tempting to look at these examples and conclude that there must just be some genetic predisposition toward athletics, singing, acting, artistic achievement or politics in these families, or that these people had unique access to contacts or coaches who could nurture their talents and careers (all true), there is actually much more to the cause and effect element of these relationships.  It takes enormous amounts of passion to achieve success at these levels, even with talent and contacts.  Yes, who you know is important.  But at some point, you have to deliver.  You have to sing the song the song, throw the ball, make the speech or deliver the lines with an unusual level of exceptional skill.  And that takes passion.  These families, and many like them, found a way to pass down passion through a generation or, in some cases, two.

This familial passion for an identical activity – resulting in tremendous success – demonstrates exactly how much people’s ability to harness passion can be influenced and programmed by their parents and siblings.  All of the parents (or siblings in the case of the John F. Kennedy and John McEnroe) involved in the above mentioned examples, wittingly or unwittingly, transferred their passion to their offspring, brothers or sisters.  That passion, combined with talent and years of disciplined practice (also demonstrated by the successful parent or sibling and learned by the son, daughter, brother or sister), drove and shaped the passion behind these fascinating stories.  Was passion handed down to you?

While not all cases of shared familial passion will result in the levels of achievement cited here, our objects of passion, our level of passion, and how we harness our passion, are clearly influenced by our parents and other family members.  If you want to find, develop and pursue your passions to create or change your life, start by understanding how your attitudes and behaviors have been influenced by your parents and family members.

Below is an exercise to help you examine these influences in your life.

Passion Journey Exercise #1

Take out a piece of paper and write down the answers to these questions:

In which ways have I been programmed by my parents, and has that programming been positive or negative in my life?

Were my parents generally positive or negative in their outlook on life while I was growing up?

Were my parents optimistic or pessimistic?

Did my parents encourage me to reach for the stars or play it safe?

Did my parents encourage or discourage my early passions?

Did my parents pursue their passions?

Did my parents enjoy life?

Did my parents feels “rich” or “poor”  (not in monetary terms, but in terms of their satisfaction with their daily life)?

Is there any particular skill, talent or interest that you acquired from your parents?

In which activities did your parents encourage you to participate?  Were they different from the one’s you wanted to pursue?

Did your parents’ attitudes about life change as they got older?  If so, how?

What were your passions as a kid?  Are they still passions now? Why or Why not?

Use the answers to these questions to reflect on your own life and attitudes.  Were you encouraged to develop and pursue your passions?  Are there passions you had when you were younger that were squashed by a parent, and that you would like to rekindle now?  Are there thoughts or attitudes that you inherited from your parents that are holding you back (or helping you succeed) in pursuing your passions or experiencing life with a passionate attitude?

If you currently have a positive, passion driven life view, how can you build on it?  If you do, go with gusto in the directions that move you.  If you have a negative, fear-filled or passionless approach to life, it’s never too late to reprogram.  If you are a parent, think about how your beliefs, attitudes and actions are programming your kids.  Are you encouraging them to stoke or stifle their passions in life?

In the next section of Chapter 2, we’ll explore the influence friends have had on your passions.

Until then,

Let Your Passion Create Your World!

Robert (aka The Passionist)

Lessons From The Passionist: How To Turn Passion Into Purpose To Create Greater Meaning and Joy in Your Life — Chapter 1- Not A Destination: My Personal Passion-Guided Journey (Conclusion)

by Robert Mazzucchelli | Apr 1, 2017 | Lessons From The Passionist

(This is Installment #5 of Lessons From The Passionist: How To Turn Passion Into Purpose To Create Greater Meaning and Joy in Your Life.  This week, I conclude the story of my passion guided journey that led me to write this book.  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 (conclusion) –  A Journey, Not a Destination: My Personal Passion Journey

In early 2001, the marketplace for big, senior level marketing and advertising jobs was changing and I was ambivalent about continuing down that career path. Clients were becoming less loyal. The digital revolution was making data manipulation and data mining sexier to brand managers than good creative ideas. And the industry as a whole, although nowhere near as sophisticated as today’s data obsessed marketing machine, was about to be shaken up in a short-term focused, digitally-driven paradigm shift. The art of building lasting brands, always a crucial counter-balance to the science of building them, was being minimized and even lost in some cases. Close relationships, always the special sauce that created the magic between clients and agencies, were becoming tenuous and short lived.  The times, they were a-changing.
Good ideas, human connection, human judgement and experience are critical to marketing success in the same way that a great driver is critical to guiding even the most technologically advanced Formula One race car to victory (Steve Jobs demonstrated this with the successful iMac and iPhone, which he developed without the use of any market research data). Technology alone can’t win the race or build a brand.  But in 2001, people were enamored with new marketing technology and, although I appreciated its value as a new addition in the arsenal of brand building tools, I was not a “technologist”. I was essentially a strategist with a creative mind who loved connecting ideas and brands with people. This changing industry dynamic and obsession with “technology for technology’s sake”, prevalent in the early 2000’s, was draining my passion for the business I loved, which had always been fueled by the human elements and creativity of the craft. Without passion, I knew it was time to change. But what to do next?

I was facing a common dilemma, and the main reason why many people don’t follow their passions: my economic success, and the comfortable lifestyle it provided, made it hard to leave or even contemplate leaving. At thirty-nine, I was living what might be considered by many a great life, with multiple homes and cars, traveling first-class to anywhere on a moments’ notice and eating in the best restaurants in the world everyday for lunch.  My daughter attended private school and we enjoyed fun-filled ski and beach vacations every year.  Who would want to change this?  I was torn about what to do. Continue on a path without passion or make a change, even if it would drastically change my lifestyle for an unforeseen period of time?

Fortunately, I have always believed that if you do what you love, you will work hard enough to become good at it, maybe even the best. If you are good, you will be well paid. There is always a market for great. From this belief, I was able to quell my fear of change.  I had confidence, based on my experience, that passion would steer me in the right direction with the right level of focus and energy to succeed at whatever I did, or it would lead me to something better.

I had spent my whole career to that point selling intangible concepts and ideas (not including the time I sold the Encyclopedia Americana door-to-door as a high school student trying to make some extra money) to brands, and had always wondered what it would be like to directly sell a tangible product, something that someone could walk into a store and touch and buy.  Sure, people bought my clients’ beer, cookies, cars, insurance and the myriad products I made campaigns to sell.  But my primary job was selling the campaigns to the clients.  I was curious about taking a new direction toward actually selling MY product to consumers.

While curious about change, I was still resisting it. Fear is powerful.  I knew how to run agencies and marketing groups, and was good at it.  It would have been a fairly easy and lucrative career path to continue. Or so I thought.  Then one day, I was invited by a recruiter to interview for a CEO position at a mid-sized agency in NYC. We had met briefly once before, and he knew my history.  However, while he had called me to interview for this position (his client had asked him to), he thankfully told me that I was unlikely to get the job or any other senior job in the advertising industry for years. What? How was that possible? It wasn’t that I was unqualified for that position or others that might come up, he stressed.  I had run my own small agency and a successful division of a large public advertising holding company. I had proven skills and relationships with clients who had worked with me for over a decade at two different agencies.

The recruiter’s theory, however, was that my age would work against me in the post-dot-com-bubble job market we were experiencing in 2001. I was still under forty, and all the candidates I was competing with for this particular job, and presumably the other senior jobs for which I would come under consideration that year, were all in their fifties. They offered at least ten more years of experience for the same or less money than I was commanding based on my work and salary history. When companies can buy good and more experienced people for less money, they usually do. It’s good value and it feels safer.  If you try to drop your price to be competitive, it doesn’t work. Smart employers know that you will leave when the next good job comes along offering to pay what you really want to earn.  So they don’t hire you.  He turned out to be right.  I did not get that job, and other attractive offers were not forthcoming.  It seems that taking the unusual, rapid-growth career path I choose by starting Pinnacle Promotions at twenty-four was effective for creating lots of early success and financial reward, but it basically made me unemployable at forty.  Thankfully, I had saved enough money to take some time and figure out what to do.  Change is a lot easier to accept when it’s the only choice, and if I was contemplating a career change out of lack of passion, now it would be out of necessity.

Understandably, I was ready to go in a new direction, when my friend Gary Cohen, then president of Ted Baker USA, invited me to lunch.  Gary and I had met on the Delta Shuttle between New York and D.C.  We were both frequent fliers on that route.  Gary lived in suburban Maryland and worked in NYC.  I lived in NYC and visited my daughter on weekends in Virginia. On our flights together, and over many lunches and dinners, Gary and I would often talk about our passions: life, sports and family, and sometimes about fashion trends and the marketing of fashion.

On this particular afternoon, I told Gary that I was thinking of leaving the marketing agency business.  I was ready to find a new passion to dive into.  “Did you ever consider a career in men’s fashion?” he asked. “It’s a growing industry and I think you might be great at it.”  Hmmm.  I had briefly thought about it Italian industrialist, Claudio Del Vecchio (of Luxottica fame) purchased the iconic American brand, Brooks Brothers, from English retailer Marks & Spencer.  I wore Brooks Brothers shirts in high school and loved the brand’s heritage and story.  Marks & Spencer had almost killed Brooks Brothers by lowering product quality and poorly managing the in-store consumer experience.  I had written to Del Vecchio a few months prior to our lunch to express interest in putting my marketing expertise and first-hand knowledge of the brand to work for him as he rebuilt the company.   I got no reply and no return phone calls.  I listened carefully to Gary as he told me what was happening in the menswear industry, and it certainly piqued my curiosity.  Apparently, the industry was booming.

Throughout my advertising career, I probably spent enough money on suits to open my own store.  My wardrobe was a big part of the “theatre” of advertising back when men wore suits to work every day.  I studied clothing and used it to create different moods and impressions in meetings.  When I was a kid, my mom taught me about clothing and how to dress appropriately for any occasion.  Her passion for fashion was fostered in high school.  At sixteen, she dreamed of being a fashion designer and was even awarded a scholarship to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design.  Unfortunately, her father, an Italian immigrant and talented artist who made his living painting beautiful signs, had other plans for her.  She should find a husband and have a family (lucky for me!).  Her fashion dream got squashed, which is probably why she was always so supportive of my dreams as I was growing up.   Anyway, I had successfully put my wardrobe to work in the boardroom for years, always creating the right image for every meeting or informal client get together.  Maybe fashion was something at which I could excel.

While I half-heartedly continued to interview for agency jobs, I found myself increasingly more interested in observing men’s clothing and brands.  I studied ads, brochures and websites.  I visited stores and read magazines to see what was happening in the business.  I was stoking a new passion. The idea of using my marketing and selling skills to sell an actual, tangible product rather than intangible ideas was gaining appeal.  My Italian background contributed to my interest because most of the best quality men’s clothing was designed and manufactured in Italy, and many of the people I spoke to as I researched the industry were Italian.  Perhaps this was a business I would enjoy, especially if it connected me to my Italian roots and offered a few visits to Italy each year.

While my passion for this possible career twist was growing, I had a lot to learn if I was going to invest my time and money in a new business. What area of the industry would I like? Wholesale or retail? Design or marketing? I studied for months and met with people in the business to learn as much as I could.  I talked to wholesalers, retailers and tailors.  I considered different business scenarios and ran spreadsheets to see if I could actually earn a decent living.  About four months after my lunch with Gary, I drew up plans to open a men’s clothing store called Robert’s.  After all my research, it seemed the best way to learn would be to start where the product touched the consumer every day – on the retail floor.  Passion had struck again and I would now pour everything I had into a new career direction for the next seven years.

I picked Westport, Connecticut as the town in which to open my first store.  Westport was close to my home town of Rowayton, a small bedroom community about thirty miles outside NYC.  It was also home to Mitchells, the most successful independent men’s specialty store in the U.S.  Ironically, Mitchells had been founded by an advertising executive who got tired of commuting back and forth from his home in Westport to NYC every day, so he started a little suit shop that grew into a $200 million plus, multi-store retail apparel empire.

I decided to open Robert’s about a mile down the road from Mitchells.  Crazy idea?  Not really.  I surmised that in the process of growing so large (they had about 15,000 customers in their database and I only needed about 800 to make my much smaller store profitable), Mitchells must have lost 5-10% of their customers over the years because of bad experiences or Mitchells’ not offering what some customers were looking for, something other than just the well-known “mass luxury” menswear brands they sold.  I planned on satisfying those customers by traveling to Italy and finding small and unique luxury brands that Mitchells did not carry.  My formula worked.  However, occasionally Mitchells would find out what I was selling from mutual customers, and place an order for the same items.  Of course, the brands would take their much bigger orders rather than mine.  It was the law of the jungle, and Mitchells was the proverbial 900 pound gorilla.  But this just kept me on my toes and provided incentive to keep searching for new items to offer my customers every season.

It turned out that Gary was right about my chances for success.  I had a natural instinct for selling fashion, probably the result of the skills that were honed by years of pitching abstract marketing campaigns to demanding clients.  I was a natural story teller, and easily romanced the products in my store.  I told of the small villages in Italy where they were made, or introduced them, virtually, to the third generation tailor who had made the very jacket they were holding.  I poured them wine from a vineyard near the shoe factory that made the shoes they were trying on.  My customers were not buying clothes.  They were buying an experience.  People who came into my store usually bought something.  Products that people could touch and try on were easy to sell, especially when accompanied by a good laugh and glass of scotch.   If fact, the selling was the easiest part of the business.

The buying was the hardest and riskiest part of retail. Picking the right merchandise for the store was tricky, especially with no experience.  Not everyone likes what you like.  As a retail buyer, you have to pick merchandise that caters to many tastes, not only yours.  And you have to buy the right quantities and sizes.  I made some massively expensive buying mistakes in the beginning, like loading up on pleated pants right as the market was moving to slimmer silhouetted, flat-front models.  I had no idea who my customers would be once the store got going, so choosing sizes, styles and colors was mostly guess work at first.  I eventually learned to how buy the right merchandise, how to take measurements for custom shirts and suits, and even how to design one-of-a-kind pieces for customers, which turned out to be a big part of my business.  My passion to be the best drove me to learn and work long hours, seven days a week, and to always explore new opportunities to grow the business.

After three years of working in Robert’s every day, I started to sense an opportunity to offer some new products to the wholesale menswear marketplace.  I felt I had learned enough in my store to start selling to other stores.  My creative and entrepreneurial juices were flowing.  I created a new brand, Roberto da Carrara, and bought another, niformis, and started a company to offer retailers like me artfully designed, high-end fashion for men.

I named the first brand after my grandfather’s hometown of Carrara (the brand name translates to “Robert of Carrara”), a town in the northwestern corner of Tuscany famous for mining the world’s best white marble.  I bought niformis from Victor DeLeon, a hugely talented, one-man band who designed, manufactured and sold amazing shirts after a stint selling Dolce & Gabbana in the men’s department at Saks Fifth Avenue’s flagship store in NYC.  Victor was a shirt star, who was known by menswear buyers for having the most creative, yet wearable shirts. The fit was amazing and the designs were just shy enough of over-the-top for most men to feel comfortable wearing.  The designs were limited each season and people collected them, which means they keep returning to the store (which retailer’s loved, of course, so they could sell them more stuff).  Victor’s passion for shirts and Italian culture was infectious.  When I initially bought his niformis collection for my Westport store, the shirts sold out immediately.  He would turn out to be an excellent partner for my new venture.

Roberto da Carrara, our uber expensive line, was made with the most luxurious fabrics and loaded with hand-made details. One-of-a-kind silk linings printed in Como, hand-hewn horn buttons, featherweight cashmere and exotic fabric blends, and the best Italian tailoring were all wrapped up in a unique brand experience.  Our target audience was small and well defined.  The brand was marketed to the man who could afford anything, and we used the tagline “Vita con Passione” (“Live with Passion”) to appeal to the adventurous and fearless nature of most our super successful prospects.  I guess the passion theme for this book was taking shape even then.  Two years after launching Roberto da Carrara, Victor and I were nominated for a global menswear design award by Fashion Group International and came in second place!  What power passion has to make things happen in life.

The business grew steadily from 2003 to early 2008.  In a few short years in the industry, I went from running a small store to running Robert’s and 2M Apparel Group, the company I formed with a small group of investors to build the Roberto da Carrara and niformis brands and to open a Roberto da Carrara store in NYC’s Nolita neighborhood.  2M had about fifty wholesale accounts by 2008 and in April 2009, Town & Country magazine featured our Nolita store as one of the best in NYC.  Robert’s had about five-hundred loyal customers.  I was on my way, harnessing my new passion to another business success.  What a journey!  What fun!

Unexpectedly, this incredible journey would start to unravel in the spring of 2008, just as we were hitting our stride. The mortgage market crash, the one ruined many people’s retirement and about which they made the movie, The Big Short, hit the NYC market harder than most.  Unfortunately for me, the majority of my customers were young financial industry hotshots making millions at the hedge funds scattered around Fairfield County and at big NYC investment banks.  We sold to other people as well, but the hedge-fund high rollers would come in every weekend and buy a few $300 shirts to wear to dinner or to take to some over the top party in St. Barths that they were flying off to in their friend’s jet.  This was our bread and butter business and the backbone of our company.  They were also the one’s about to stop spending money.

By fall of 2008, the entire business had skidded to a abrupt halt.  It was not a slow down.  People who thought nothing of casually spending $2500 on a Saturday afternoon in our stores wouldn’t even buy a pair of $150 jeans.  Stores were canceling or reducing our wholesale orders.  Or worse, returning merchandise.  Full on consumer panic had set in, and even people who were not financially devastated by the crash stopped spending money.  They felt guilty spending money on something as conspicuous as fashion while the world they knew melted down around them.  My customers, most of whom had become friends, regaled me with tales of market woes and new budget constraints.  Many lost their jobs.  Some lost their houses.  And some lost everything, including their trophy wives who had jumped on the gravy train when the market was red hot and money was flowing freely.

By mid-2009, I knew I had to act.  Forced with an “invest more or shut down” scenario, I liquidated the inventory of both stores, and shut them down.  Our heralded flagship store in Lolita didn’t even stay open for a full year.  I wound down the wholesale business as fast as I could.  It was a whirlwind of activity, of liquidation and negotiation.  By 2010, I exited the fashion business completely, unwilling to invest more time and money waiting and hoping for the market to improve for our products.  Good decision.  It didn’t recover for about five years, which would have been a long and expensive wait.  I have great respect for small boutique owners, especially those who weathered that crash.  Retailing is one of the hardest things I have ever done in business.  You can make a fortune or lose your shirt (no pun intended) very quickly.

Even with the difficult and abrupt ending, I loved everything about my experiences and career in the fashion and retail business (except maybe the seven day work weeks).  I still visit stores and share war stories with other store owners.  I have great memories of traveling to Como and Biella in Italy during those years, visiting the best fabric mills in the world and seeing how the most exquisite cashmeres and wools are actually made.  One year, I took my daughter on a fun-filled trip to Florence to accompany me to Pitti Uomo, the premier seasonal men’s buying show that happens twice a year in that inspiring historical city.  I met and learned about quality from passionate artisans who made our buttons, shoes, silk, suits, shirts and other apparel items, many of whom still run family-owned companies that are a century old or more.  I even ate my way through the entire country of Italy, my ancestral homeland, and learned many cooking secrets (another one of my passions) that I use everyday.  Most importantly, I learned about myself as I navigated the only market crash that actually effected my life directly and significantly.

After closing Robert’s and 2M Apparel Group, I needed to recharge my batteries.  Even the most passionate people reach a limit to their energy, and I had reached mine.  I decided to leave the hustle, bustle and winter weather of the NYC area and move to sunny Sarasota, FL.  It was a quiet town with the most beautiful beach in the U.S., Siesta Key.  Just what the doctor ordered.

The move to Florida, and out of the frenetic environment of NYC, gave me a chance to refresh my energy and decide which passion would drive my next adventure.  While I was winding down 2M Apparel, I went back to my roots and formed Crosscourt Advisors, a consulting business advising marketing agencies and brands on a variety of issues.  By the time I relocated to the sunshine state, I had a few good clients.  But I wasn’t ready to jump in to work full time.  Instead, I spent much of my time learning and practicing yoga, swimming in the ocean with dolphins and manatees, playing tennis and generally recharging my batteries.  I wanted to be patient and see which of my passions would be the driving force for my next career move.

I operated in this partial-work mode for almost three years, advising a client or two at a time.  Eventually, my energy returned and I started considering my next chapter in life. Sarasota was a sleepy town, full of mostly retired people and somewhat lost, younger people who worked in the bars and restaurants that catered to the tourists who visited the beautiful, white sandy beaches of the gulf-coach.   It was no place for a recharged New Yorker.  As I was getting prepared to get back to a more active work life, I knew I would also need to move.  After living in the tropics and enjoying the quality of life that comes with living in a warm climate, going back to a cold city was out of the question.  As I looked around the U.S. for a warm-weather climate with close proximity to the ocean, an international vibe, and a vibrant business community, Miami was the obvious choice.  So off I went to the Magic City.

If there was ever a city to ignite your passion and make you feel engaged in life, Miami is it.  The combination of beautiful tropical blue water, lush foliage and palm trees, incredibly designed skyscrapers, vibrant music and art, gourmet food and people from all over the world provide all the energy needed to light you up every day.  Yet, Miami also has a tropical chill vibe, which makes it slower and calmer than New York or other major world cities.  In Miami, you can work hard and then easily slow down.  In New York, it seemed hard to ever slow down.  The balance in Miami was perfect for me.  I felt at home immediately and ready to begin the next phase of my life.

Since it’s inception, Crosscourt Advisors had been engaged to work on a variety of marketing-related projects.  While in Sarasota, I worked with both agencies and brands.  I worked with both start-ups and established companies.  I basically worked with everyone who called for help, provided it didn’t interfere too much with my schedule.  I was a bit unfocused.  But once in Miami, and back in my groove, I was able to give my company a more clear, passion-driven definition.  My passion translated into three areas of business: helping people bring their ideas to life, helping make brands better and helping people achieve their dreams.  With my focus clear, I was able to pick the clients who best aligned with my work and personal goals, and I was even able to schedule time to write this book!

Today, about forty years after pursuing my first real passion on the tennis court, I look back at the incredible journey taken, while keeping an eye toward the future.  I’m enjoying the present, while anticipating the next unexpected twists that my passions seem to attract.  I still work in the tennis and marketing industries and, as I write, am launching a new fashion lifestyle brand called The Original Miami Beach Towel Co. (which I started because I could not find a good beach towel in Miami Beach. Go figure!)  Passions tend to be cumulative and portable.  While some die out, others follow you around and intensify over time.  Many of mine have followed me and grown and fed each other throughout my life.  It’s been a fascinating ride so far, all because I decided when I was twelve years-old to fearlessly follow my own path.  I had no idea where it would lead, or what it would lead to.  All I know is that I have never sat around bored or wishing I was doing something else for one second.  To me, that’s a successful life.

If you have not yet identified your passion, it’s okay.  Many people haven’t.  I am going to help you find yours.  In fact, the process of exploration is itself an exercise in passion.  Plenty of people have to try different things for years before they find the one thing that makes them tick, that gets them out of bed in the morning with the anticipation that “today, I get to do what I love!”  There is great satisfaction in trying different sports and activities; learning about different areas of science or medicine; creating art with cameras, brushes and pencils; cooking foods from around the world; learning new languages and traveling to new countries to try them out; writing stories and poems; or building a business that serves some unmet need.  The passion possibilities are endless. The key is to be open to trying new things and sticking with the one’s that grab your attention.  Embrace them and let them enthrall you.

My father, who was a dentist, left a prescription on my desk one morning while I was getting ready for school.  I asked, “Dad, what’s that?” “A prescription for life,” he answered as he went off to work.  On the prescription pad, he had written four words:

patience

persistence

consistency

balance.

You can’t pursue a passion driven life without following that prescription. You need patience to find your passion and to endure life’s inevitable ups and downs.  You need persistence to pursue your passion until you reach a level of competency that will bring you joy, and possibly allow you to earn a living from your passion, if that is your goal.  You need to be consistent in your study and practice of your passion, and not get distracted or pulled off course.  And you need to find balance in life, so your passion does not consume your entire existence and lead to burnout.  I will reveal more about the power of this prescription throughout the book.

The list of possible passions is infinite, and if you don’t explore all that life has to offer, not only will you not find your passion, you will wake up one day wondering “How did I get HERE?”  And you’ll be asking not with gratitude, as I did that morning on my walk along the water in Miami when i decided to write this book, but with the frustration that you are not where you want to be.  Today is the day to begin living a life that gives you energy, rather than sucking it out of you.  Today is the day to wake up smiling and excited about the day ahead.  Today is the day to shape your life in your own way on your own terms.  Today is the day to start living your life with passion!.  Today is the day to let your passion start to create your world.

Let’s get started!

(Next week, in Installment #6, I will post Chapter 2:  What Drives You To Do The Things You Do in Life.  In this chapter, I will explore our early influencers – parents, friends, family, teachers, etc. – the people who likely shaped our world view and behaviors, and either helped or inhibited our ability to find and pursue our passions.  In this chapter, I’ll start to tell you some ways you can begin finding your passions.  Until then…)

Let Your Passion Create Your World,

Robert (aka, The Passionist)