Sharing lessons learned from an Eternal Rock Pusher

For almost twenty years I have lived the life of a serial entrepreneur. After spending the first half of my career with fortune 500 companies I have started five different companies.  In all of these business endeavors I equate my life to pushing square rocks uphill.

I have managed to stay married to the same wife, raise two kids, pay for a very expensive  wedding, continue to pay for college and have watched the birth of my first grand child.

I have witnessed first hand the difficulty in birthing an idea into a product and taking that very precious concept into the market.   It does not matter if you work in a large company, an small company, you are a leader or a follower, you are involved each day in pushing either your rock or someone else's uphill.

I hope the stories of my success and failures will enlarge your vision of who you can be and how you can be more effective leader of men and women in all areas of your life. 

Over the years I have achieved great success, experienced total failure, and yet always continued to climb the hill in front of me.  I have tried to capture the essence some of the most powerful concepts that we tend to ignore in business.  As I present these concepts to you, I want you to consider that anyone can use the principles.  

The first key to successfully pushing rocks uphill is the envisioning process.  You see we all start at the bottom of a very steep hill with a very big flat rock. Without an envisioning process it is highly likely the Rock will back over on you at some point in your journey. For those impatient Rock Pushers, take a deep breath and figure out what route you will take up the hill.  More on this later. 

How is your retirement plan looking on the steep hill called life?

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

What can you say about the most quoted verse in the Bible, yet there is great encouragement for rock pushers. In business,  I spend hours each day in the quest for the golden ring. You know a big salary, bonus, power, recognition, achievement and a great retirement package. Those valuable things that everyone wants but few get.

Love does not have a lot of time to enter my day as I strive for the things I do not have. I did not realize that back on November 6, 1963 I won the equivalent of a golden parachute. My reward for life I had not yet lived. I became a follower of Jesus Christ. 

That day, I got my ticket punched for an eternal life to live in a mansion in heaven where the streets are paved with gold. I get to spend my eternal retirement with God, Jesus and all the other believers. I defeated death and will live forever. All of that was too much for a nine year old new believer to comprehend. I still had to conqueror life on earth.

How did this happen? It happened only because God loved me, nothing more. 
How did this happen? It happened because God gave Jesus his only son as the substitute sacrifice for my sins. How did this happen? It happened because I simply believed, nothing more. I was made pure and blameless in Gods eyes. Because of this I have a great retirement plan, and eternal in heaven with the creator of life.

Looking back to the age of nine when I decided to follow Jesus, I wish I had really understood what I had not earned but been given as a gift of grace. I have spent most of my adult life pushing square rocks uphill, trying to achieve, trying to grab the golden ring when I already had it securely in my procession; eternal life. I had already achieved the ultimate success and the most valuable gift ever given, because of the 26 words in the third chapter of the book of John. 


“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.


So today be encouraged. No matter how steep the hill, no matter how heavy your square rock may seem you have a great retirement plan at the end. You also have a powerful ally in pushing your earthly rocks uphill. You just have to decide to allow him to help, but thats another thought for late

Did you know you have a Hall of Fame Marriage?

Pushing the relationship rock up the hill of life is not easy.  There are times when we wonder if we can navigate through all the black holes to success.  Then you may ask yourself, how do you define success in a relationship?

Too many, simply staying married a long time is success. Others may say, how can longevity be defined as success when there are many days we do not even get along.  Here is another way to look at success in relationships.

In baseball if a player has a lifetime batting average of .333 in usually means that the player has demonstrated great success in hitting the ball. Based on this career they generally are elected to the baseball hall of fame from this success.

If you break down this "success" it means that the player got a hit 3 times out of ten. That means that 7 times out of ten they failed to get a hit.  Yet the baseball world honors this success.  In sales if a sales person made three sales out of ten attempts they would be a superstar.

So in your marriage, if you and your spouse get along 3 days out of seven you are batting .428. That marriage batting average is terrific.  You will have a hall of fame marriage with 3 days out of 7. But remember, that would mean you have 4 strikeout days.

We live in a society where when we have some bad relationship days we decide we have to move on and try to find someone who can "make more hits".  There are people every day who throw away Hall of Fame marriages thinking that they have to achieve perfection.

In most areas of life a .333 success rate is to be cheered. Take a minute to evaluate your relationship batting average.  if your close to .333 then be encouraged, you have "hall of fame" written all over you and that relationship.

It is from this new perception of success that you will find encouragement as you push the square rock of relationship uphill.

How to Deal with the Rock of Misunderstanding

“To be great is to be misunderstood” Emerson

Misunderstanding, It is a roadblock that most of us will never see coming. It is a powerful force that can be intentionally and unintentionally used against us in our quest to push our square rock uphill.

Misunderstanding can be a real momentum stopper, most times it forces us to stop and fix the misunderstanding before we can move forward. There are numerous examples of misunderstanding in the Bible.

• Consider Joseph in Genesis 39: He was thrown into jail because of a major misunderstanding.
• Consider David, He had to flee when Saul misunderstand his honorable intentions.

David’s example is probably the hardest for me. On those rare occasions when I do something for someone without any thought for what it could do for me and its thrown back in my face, I do not handle it well. Satan uses that the most to give us the attitude of, “I’ll never do that again, or, see if I open myself up to help like that again.”

• Consider Jesus. From birth to death here was a misunderstood Man, and a misunderstood God on earth. You can barely make it one chapter to the next without Jesus being misunderstood.

There are several types of several types of misunderstanding that we have to deal with as believers 1. Genuine Misunderstanding which generally means your actions or words are confusing.
2. Agenda driven Misunderstanding which means you and your actions were very clear but others want to use them to their advantage. This may or may not affect you.
3. Third party misunderstandings, generally are caused when someone else restates your position or intentions and others do not get your full meaning or intention.
4. Intentional Misunderstanding, when YOU try to confuse the situation to your advantage.
5. Family Misunderstandings, generally are exacerbated by emotions and the history of baggage

We see in the first chapter of John that Jesus was going to be misunderstood.

John 1 5 The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.In the follow verses we will see Jesus encounter a variety of different circumstances of misunderstanding. When combined with the examples listed above, they will give us a good roadmap on how to identify and reduce the damage to momentum these issues cause. Unlike other roadblocks,

Misunderstanding can never be eliminated, only damage controlled.

Some thoughts to help to get you through misunderstanding!  Before you react in the flesh. Turn to the Holy Spirit to guide you asking these questions:

• When misunderstood ask WHO?
• If misunderstanding continues ask WHY?
• When misunderstanding is resolved ask WHAT did I learn?

You will encounter misunderstanding each day of your life. When we try to handle it ourselves with our flesh is when we fall into Satan's trap.  Stand strong in the Spirit and and do not quickly lash out when you feel the attack of misunderstanding.