This story originally appeared on the Gents Cafe Newsletter. You can subscribe here.
My dad could command a room. He still can, but in my mind I’m once again the thirteen-year-old boy sitting at a dinner table watching him do what he does best: captivate an audience, put everyone at ease in his presence, and tell stories that carry lessons and, in response, demand action. He’s deeply contemplative, his thoughts conveyed with dancing eyebrows, his message often wandering a storyteller’s long path—sorry, dad—but the end point surgical and considered.
He’s a businessman in the world of golf and I had the privilege of growing up watching his work result in the development of resorts around the globe. In hindsight, I realize that I was given a free ride to a world-class education in business and people. Of course, there were some discussions here and there about the art behind the science of business, but the real gold of being his son was simply watching him conduct himself day in and day out. If inheritances were valued solely on things passed on by thought, word, and action, I could say without hesitation that I’m as wealthy as they come.
But I was an only child and along with that siblingless status came the typical only child treatment. In other words, I was a bit soft. Until I met Nigel Penny, my PE teacher in high school and a man who was anything but soft. For reasons still unbeknownst to me, he looked through my weak outer shell and saw something more that even I didn’t know existed. He saw it and he worked unrelenting until I saw it, too. He ignited a competitive fire within me, both against others and against myself, and many of my successes in life and business came about thanks to the inner drive that he helped cultivate. He didn’t have to push me the way he did; it was a choice, and I’m better because of it.
What makes a man, a man? I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer this. I’m immediately plagued by the pain of my failings to show up, to be responsible, to “be a man,” but as I write this I can see through the glass wall of my office to the office of two young entrepreneurs, both almost two decades my junior. I’m reminded that I have both the opportunity and responsibility to daily set an example worth emulating and to call to the surface the potential I see in others. It’s what was done for me; it’s the least I can do for others. Let’s not even start pondering the example I need to set for my 6-year-old son.
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