At some point along my path, I realized I had a gift for helping people make their dreams come true. Here are a couple of my more unusual success stories with friends and clients:
- A plumber with hurt knees remembers he was attracted to computers in the army but never had a chance to pursue it. He follows my recommendations for what computer to buy first, and then continually asks advice about what to do next so he doesn't waste his time. A few years later he is earning a high hourly rate and being flown all over the country for his expertise.
- A welfare mother cries on my shoulder that she can't get off welfare because she has no time to work at a job. I look around her apartment and suggest she start off just focusing on clearing out her place so she'll become more efficient time-wise. This ignites her spirit. She sells off clothes, books, movies, as well as eliminating junk and clearing out projects. As her place starts looking cleaner, her ex-husband pitches in by buying new bookshelves. Finally her life is efficient enough whereby she finds time to work at a part-time job. This eventually pays well enough to get the family off of welfare.
- A successful older blue-collar business owner hires me to help him with current bookkeeping and to prepare financial reports so that he can pay back taxes. Since he was functionally illiterate, everyone else had frauded him which is how he got into this mess. I help him get his accounting into perfect order. With that, over the next couple of years, he became financially secure. Once a system is in place, it takes no time at all to maintain, so I asked him what he wanted to do next? He decided to retire and pursue a hobby. I helped him collect money owed, and created a list of assets he could liquidate and their current appraisal value. A year later he dies suddenly. He received the precious gift of a year of freedom.
The broader picture is that we don’t always need more; sometimes we need to manage what we already have in a way that helps us to accomplish our true goals in life.
