Live to Give

Pedro had an unusual childhood. His father died when he was ten, and as the oldest son, he assumed the responsibility to provide for his family. He dropped out of school and began looking for work. In his country, it was not uncommon for a child to find work in a factory. Wages were low and the hours were long, but Pedro was ambitious and he had a family to feed. After a long day at the factory, Pedro would walk the city streets with a rag and shine shoes for tips. When he saved enough money he purchased some shoe polish and his tips increased. After several years Pedro was able to acquire a small kiosk with a permanent location. Every evening after working in the factory Pedro would shine shoes and people came to respect him for his hard work and punctuality. Life was a struggle but he always wore a smile.

By his late teens, Pedro had become known as a master apprentice. He would regularly teach kids how to survive on the streets by shining shoes. He was sort of a big brother and mentor to dozens of youth living in challenging situations.

In time, Pedro came to have a family of his own, a wife and four children. Six people living in a one-bedroom shanty would have been unbearable if not for the love they felt for one another. Still, Pedro wanted more for his family, and this led to one of the most difficult decisions of his life.

Pedro asked his wife, Maria, to leave the country and find a higher paying job in America. She arrived in New York and was hired to work in a factory. She worked for two years to save enough money to buy a plane ticket for Pedro to join her. Then Pedro made another big sacrifice and left his four children with relatives so he could come to America and begin saving to bring them all together again. Pedro found work in a shoe factory, where his skill and experience with shoes allowed him to excel. He moved into manufacturing, where he made shoes for unique people and events. His shoes were worn by the famous Radio City Music Hall Rockettes, ballet dancers, and even the Smallest Man in the World in the Ringling Brothers Circus. Within two years, Pedro had saved enough money to bring his children to New York for a permanent family reunion.

JP was Pedro’s youngest son, and at age four, he had hardly spent any time with his parents. Pedro made up for this by teaching JP important life lessons about working hard and not forgetting where you come from. JP recalls numerous family trips back to his home country of the Dominican Republic. He never understood why his family traveled with so many suitcases on those trips. He often complained how heavy they were and found it curious that they were so light on the way back to NY. As a teenager, he learned that his father would pack the bags with clothes and supplies for people in his hometown less fortunate than him. This taught JP one of his dad’s favorite lessons firsthand: giving back unconditionally.

Pedro died in the summer of 2000 but his legacy lives on. JP, better known as Juan Casimiro, grew to be one of the world’s leading experts on youth empowerment. He is a Big Brother and mentor to over 100 youth. Juan travels the world, having visited over 30 countries, and never arrives empty-handed. In 2002, Juan started a toy drive to personally deliver toys to deserving children in developing countries. That first year he provided 50 toys to kids, and he knows from experience that one toy often gets shared and passed down to three younger children. Ten years later, the Casimiro Global Foundation has donated over thirty-thousand toys to children all over the world. This year they have a goal of 10,000 toys to benefit 10,000 children in 10 countries.

Remember that everything you do matters. Pedro’s life and lessons impacted his son Juan, who in turn has impacted hundreds of thousands of children all over the world. Their story inspired me to donate to their charity, and I hope you will consider donating toys or funds too:  www.CasimiroGlobalFoundation.org

Many people are looking to attract abundance into their life. Just remember that giving always precedes receiving.  This Holiday season, I give you the gift of the Live to Give Mindset.

Until next week...

Live Your Dreams

Rags to Riches

When I was 14 years old I remember asking my mother for money so I could go to the movies with my friends. She looked at me and with a smile she said, “What do I look like, a bank?” It was her way of teaching me the importance of working for the things you want in life. When I responded that I was only 14 and not legally allowed to work yet, she handed me a rag and told me I was now hired to clean the windows in the house. I made $10 and went to the movies. The popcorn that day was even more delicious because I felt the satisfaction of earning it.

Years later I was living in the Bronx while attending college at Fordham University. The Bronx was not the safest neighborhood, and one day I overheard a guy talking about how hard it was for him to find a job. He said he was just out of prison and no one wanted to hire him. I made a suggestion that if he couldn’t find a job maybe he could create one. He looked at me as if I should mind my own business. That’s exactly what I decided to do when I made him an offer.

I proposed we form a partnership. I asked him to look up and down the street at all the awnings on top of the local stores. They were filthy and no one was cleaning them. “How long do you think it would take you to clean one of these awnings?” I asked. After some consideration he said, “About an hour.” I then walked into one of the stores and offered to clean their awning for $50. To my surprise, the owner said yes. I asked for a $20 deposit and told him the job would start in about an hour. I walked into ten more stores and signed up seven more customers. I bought a ladder, a hose, a bucket, some soap, and rags.

At the end of the day we had washed eight awnings and after deducting the cost of supplies we each earned $150. The next day we repeated the process and someone asked if we cleaned windows. Flashback to my mom handing me a rag when I was 14 and I immediately said, “Of course we clean windows.” The man was a manager of an old run-down hotel. He asked for a price to clean 1,000 windows, but emphasized that we would have to clean them in one day. I figured we would need 20 workers cleaning 50 windows each. We charged $5 a window and made a profit of $3,000. The funny thing was that all the workers were also people who had recently been released from prison, and none of them could find a job…until that day.

Twenty years later on a recent trip to San Francisco I went into a café for breakfast. While I waited for my order I read a newspaper article about the restaurant. The headline was “Serving Time,” and the article began, “A bank robber is cooking the chicken, a jewel thief is refilling the water glasses, and a waiter is discussing his time in prison…which waiter, all of them.” It turns out that the restaurant is completely staffed and operated by ex-convicts.

Mimi Silbert started the Delancey Street Foundation with a $1,000 loan. Her mission was to revolutionize the way prisoners are rehabilitated. She believed that most rehabilitation centers coddle prisoners and she decided to do the opposite. In exchange for having their basic needs met (shelter, clothes, and food), each convict works hard in a business. They learn life and business skills, and combined with some needed therapy they embark on an amazing second chance. 14,000 former prisoners have gone through the program. 10,000 have gone on to earn a high school equivalency diploma and 1,000 went on to college. Equally as impressive is that 80% avoid going back to jail.

I wonder how many of us are walking around in our own mental prison. We may not be locked up physically, but are we allowing our thoughts to roam free? If we limit our dreams because we’ve failed before then we are sentencing ourselves to a life without parole. It’s time to dream again and perhaps bigger than ever. Give yourself a second chance. You’re the judge and the jury. How about a lifetime sentence of dreaming big? Your rags to riches story may only be one window cleaning away.

Until next week…

Live Your Dreams

Passions into Dreams

September 19, 2012

Johnny was a tough little kid. He often tugged on the braids of the girls in his class. He wasn’t interested in school and his grades were poor. At the age of five, Johnny got into a fight on the school playground and was suspended. The teachers thought he was simply acting out because his father was away from home so often and his mother didn’t know how to discipline him. As he got older he was too much to handle and his mom sent him to live with his aunt and uncle. Johnny felt depressed and turned to his love of music for comfort.

Tragedy struck when Johnny was 17 and his mother was killed in a car accident. Once again he turned to his guitar for comfort. One day on the bus ride to school he heard that another kid lost his mother to cancer. That kid was James and he was only 15. Johnny felt bad and sat next to him on the bus. They shared a similar interest in guitars and the two of them started playing chords and making up lyrics.

They had an idea to form a band but they needed one more person. James recommended his friend George, but George was only 14 and Johnny thought he was too young. They couldn’t find anyone else so George was in. They called themselves Johnny and the Moondogs. They weren’t that good, but they loved to play, and they practiced a lot more than they did their homework.

The three guys played cover songs at school events, church outings, and in a little coffee shop owned by the mother of their friend Pete. Pete played the drums and when he joined the band they changed their name to The Quarrymen in honor of the local Quarry where none of the boys wanted to work. They made a pact to keep practicing so they could eventually get paid to play music. No one hired them because they were just kids, but Pete’s mom, in an effort to keep her son off the street, allowed them to keep playing at her coffee shop.

A few years later they were hired to play at a nightclub. Even though the money wasn’t that much, Johnny believed it was a sign of positive things to come. They asked their friend Stu to come along and now the band had five members. The good times didn’t last that long because George was arrested and sent home for being under age…he was only 17 at the time and it was illegal for him to perform in a nightclub. The guys went home too and continued to practice clinging to the thought that their day would come.

Johnny and James wrote a song and a local radio station agreed to play it. The song was pretty catchy and the guys got an appointment with a record label, but the label turned them down saying they didn’t like their music, and noting that guitar music was on the way out. However, that song kept getting played and it wasn’t long before “Love Me Do” was a smash hit. After a few more adjustments to the band, their lives were about to change. Stu decided he would rather pursue being an artist and Pete was replaced. The final four included John Lennon, James Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr and with one more name change, they became forever known as The Beatles. Within four years Beatlemania swept the world and in addition to living their dreams, the friends all became millionaires.

It’s estimated that the Beatles practiced for over 10,000 hours before they became famous. That’s the equivalent of working 40 hours per week for 5 years. Not many people are willing to work that hard to achieve their dreams. Most of us want our lives to change without the effort and persistence that is required. As journalist Sydney Harris put it, “Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.”

The process that transforms a band into the Beatles is the same process that transforms your passions into your dreams. When you do what you love and you maintain a burning desire to succeed, it rarely feels like work. 10,000 hours becomes a journey of joy and it often leads to what others call an overnight success.

Until next week…

Live Your Dreams

Live to Give - Near or far

What do old sneakers, abandoned animals and marines in Afghanistan have in common? Usually, not much. But today, they are part of a formula that I believe can transform the world. I may be putting a lot of pressure on old sneakers but here goes...

It's been rumored that Albert Einstein once said that the greatest invention of all time was compound interest. He's also been quoted as saying compound interest is the 8^th wonder of the world. Whether he actually said these or whether they're an urban legend I will leave for you to decide. But let's take a quick moment to look at what compound interest is. The concept is simple - invest some money properly and over time your money grows because you earn interest and you even earn interest on your interest. So for example if you invested one dollar a day ($30 a month) for 66 years you would have invested a total amount of $23,760 dollars. However, if you earn 8% annually on your money then your investment of $1 a day will compound to be worth $1 million dollars. Greatest invention ever? Maybe. But I would like to share another investment strategy that just might top this one.

As regular readers may recall, I visited Fargo, North Dakota and Moorhead, Minnesota in April. Admittedly, these places were not on my "must visit" list. However, 19-year old Stephanie, a former student, invited me to speak to several thousand high school students. With the help of some of her college classmates, they arranged all the details. I only spoke for 90-minutes and I focused my message on finding your passion and making a meaningful difference in the lives of others. At the end of the presentation, I announced a 37-day "Live to Give Challenge" in which students could work alone or in groups to utilize their talents and passions to make a positive impact for a cause they believed in. That's it. 90 minutes and a challenge, then I left town.

I encourage you to follow this link (http://www.livetogivechallenge.com/Fargo/Videos.html) and watch the two winning videos to see for yourself what old sneakers, abandoned animals, and marines in Afghanistan have in common. More importantly, you will see why I believe we have a new formula to transform the world. Instead of the formula for compound interest I believe we've discovered a formula to compound human potential.

Passion + Purpose + Action = Change the World. Identify your unique passions - what would you do for free? What are you better at than most people? What do you absolutely love to do? Then think about your purpose in life. Why are you here? What greater good are you ultimately suited for? What social causes light your fire? Once you have even the basic idea of your passion and your purpose, think of ways to combine them and take some action, any action toward pursuing them. Start today. Invest now. Let the compounding effect of your actions slowly build over time. Everything you do matters, from the thoughts you think to the actions you take. We all have the power inside of us to live our dreams and positively improve the world.

I am humbled by what a 90-minute seminar inspired. I also realize that it took a 1-week seminar to inspire and empower Stephanie to go back home and conceive the idea and arrange all the details to bring me to her home town. Stephanie took part in the Ultimate Life Summit along with 100 other teens from around the world. Our next summit is July 2-9 at Walt Disney World. Over 80% of the participants require scholarships to attend. The event is run by volunteers including me. We are in the process of raising money for the Ultimate Life Scholarship Fund. To make a tax-deductible donation, please visit https://www.magicwandfoundation.org/node/348

I hope you will take action today; by applying the message in this week's letter or by donating and empowering the future of a teenager at the Ultimate Life Summit. Either way, in order to compound human potential you may not need old sneakers, but you do have to make an investment.

Until next week...

Live Your Dreams!