(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)
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