Hold On My Brother, You Will Make It!

Today is the last day of the Grand Conclave in Minneapolis and things must be going very well since I have not heard anything good, bad, or indifferent to the week of events.

I just had a memory of a previous Saturday morning during a Grand Conclave and as a result, I want to encourage someone who may be feeling less than an achiever, unemployed, or more than likely underemployed.

My memory goes back 12 years when on the Saturday morning of the Grand Conclave held in Philadelphia, I received a telephone call from my wife telling me not to go into work on Monday.

It turned out that I was fired while I had full permission to attend the Grand Conclave.  Needless to say, it has been one of the most traumatic experiences I have ever had in my professional career.

At the time, I was working with a telecommunications company in their finance department but as a temporary worker with hopes of being hired to full-time status.  I got along very well with my coworkers and it was during the summer after I had earned my MBA in finance from Clark Atlanta University.  I had already proven my abilities by reducing a workload considered impossible to manageable.  Maybe I blew the curve to my own harm.

It was also at the very beginning of the public consumption and fascination with the internet and Brothers were still getting used to finding one another on the internet since e-mail was the primary means of online communication versus websites.  I had already gained experience within the telecommunications industry and working in a financial department was going to be icing on the cake I thought.

The decision to go the Grand Conclave was a fairly last minute decision and although I was not going to be paid any vacation time, I believed that I would have a job to return to.  Boy, was I wrong.

But the biggest surprise is that the numerous coworkers actually believed that I had committed some type of company infraction when they already knew that I and another fraternity Brother would be traveling on the same trip.

I was accused of receiving e-mails that were non-company related while another coworker was distributing David Letterman's Top Ten List daily.  This same guy showed me how to send and receive messages via e-mail.  So I now tell people not to even receive e-mail messages at work if they can avoid it.  The headaches are just not worth it.

I found out that my team was informed of my firing at a company meeting that Friday and that a policy regarding e-mail was being enforced more than before.  The temporary agency gave the message not to return to work to my wife and I discovered the rest upon returning to Atlanta from Philadelphia.

After hearing the news that Saturday morning, I went into entrepreneurial overdrive.  My focus was that if I was going to be fired, then I needed a business opportunity to make up any differences.  So I quickly went to the exhibition hall and scoured every table present for any sign of a business opportunity or product or service that I could offer upon returning home.

I did find one that I later created a company to capitalize on my findings.  The business involved prepaid calling cards and the product was clearly within its infancy at that time.  But the same weekend ultimately led to my founding of TNL Internet Services which has become TNL Communications Corporation now renamed The Next Mint on November 1, 1995.  My entrepreneurial activities related to the internet have their roots to that Saturday morning.

I just want to encourage at this time the Brother or Sister that runs across this blog to know that you will indeed make it in spite of the obstacles you are currently facing.  Do not allow the manager, supervisor, coworker, or commute make your life less than what your capabilities dictate.

You will indeed soar with eagles versus being stuck in the presence of turkeys:)

Currently my professional career is light years away from the experience in 1995 and although there are some things that I would or will change at some point, conquering the opportunity to fully assume the burden of failure that someone else falsely tried to place on my shoulders 12 years ago strengthens me today and should strengthen you within your own professional career.

Setbacks are indeed set ups to greater achievement and successes!  You only will lose when you no longer attempt to try to get back up again.

Do not allow any steady paycheck to deaden your entrepreneurial senses and insights because you only control your destiny versus any board of directors or middle or lower management.

Think it not strange to see people fight tooth and nail within workplaces when you know instinctively that you were meant to be, see, do, and have more.  You are simply passing through while they will remain at their mountain top experiences.  You have higher hills and mountains to climb.

Some years later, I attended a luncheon in which a man that I never met before uttered some words that I have never forgotten since.  He told me prophetically "The battle that you are going through is not over your present.  It is over your future".

Knowing where your true battle lies and what point you must defend with all of your being is indeed your critical opportunity that you must accept and conquer today.  Nothing else matters.

Only after you focus and redefine what achievement means to you based upon where you are today and with the resources you have available, your opportunity to be the person you were meant to become is released into your hands.

I only hope that my darkest professional moment to date gives you an opportunity to learn from my mistakes in judgment as well as my resurrection experience.  No experience anyone else tries to offer higher or lower can compare to the lessons learned when I was only 30 years old back then on a Saturday morning at the 1995 Grand Conclave in Philadelphia.  I still am thankful for the brotherly love experienced there at my first Grand Conclave ever attended.

Godspeed!

Yours in the Bond!